.<rrxTr>"«i% 


DEC  3  1917 


BS  2417  .W2  P4  1917 
Pell,  Edward  Leigh,  1861- 
What  did  Jesus  really  teach 
about  war? 


WHAT  DID  JESUS 

REALLY 
TEACH  ABOUT  WAR? 


fFORKs  sr 
Edward  Leigh  Pell 

Our  Troublesome  Religiotts  Questions. 
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WHAT  DID  JESUS 

REALLY 
TEACH  ABOUT  WAR? 


DEC  ;■;  mi 

BY 


EDWARD  LEIGH  PELL 

Author  of 
*'Our  Troublesome  Religious  Questions,"  etc. 


New  York        Chicago        Toronto 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 

London     and      Edinburgh 


Copyright,  191 7,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York :  138  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh :     100    Princes    Street 


PREFACE 

WE  shall  not  win  this  war  until  it 
gets  on  our  conscience.  We 
may  end  it,  but  that  is  another 
matter.  It  was  on  our  conscience  once 
— the  violation  of  Belgium  put  it  there — 
but  somehow  it  slipped  off — how  or  why 
we  need  not  now  inquire.  And  it  has 
never  gotten  back. 

I  was  saying  as  much  to  a  friend  of 
mine  the  other  day  when  he  interrupted 
me.  "Yes,"  he  said  warmly,  "but  it  is  get- 
ting back.  I  was  at  that  great  mass-meet- 
ing Sunday  and  I  never  saw  such " 

I  knew  the  rest.  It  was  indeed  a  won- 
derful meeting.  There  was  a  great  talk 
and  a  great  collection  and  a  tremendous 
burst  of  enthusiasm  that  lifted  us  straight 
up  to  the  third  heaven.  But  when  it  was 
over  people  went  away  saying,  "Yes, 
we've  got  to  do  it.  We  must  whip  them 
over  there  or  we  shall  have  to  whip  them 
over  here." 

B 


6  Preface 

Undoubtedly  the  war  has  gotten  on 
America's  sensibilities,  but  it  is  not  on  her 
conscience.  Only  here  and  there  does  one 
meet  a  man  who  is  doing  his  "bit"  with  a 
sense  of  exaltation,  as  one  who  has  heard 
in  that  awful  cry  for  help  the  voice  of  his 
own  kin;  as  one  who  has  had  a  vision  of 
Christ's  tender  compassion  for  the  op- 
pressed or  of  Christ's  blasting  indignation 
against  the  oppressor. 

It  does  not  take  much  to  win  some 
wars.  A  war  for  territory  may  be  won  by 
a  foolish  illusion  that  will  send  a  people 
forward  under  the  compulsion  of  what 
they  believe  to  be  an  economic  necessity. 
But  a  war  for  the  right  can  only  be  won 
by  an  awakening  of  conscience  that  will 
send  a  people  forward  under  the  compul- 
sion of  a  high  moral  obligation. 

America  has  many  needs,  but  I  can  con- 
ceive of  nothing  more  urgent  in  the  pres- 
ent crisis  than  a  vision  of  the  face  of  Him 
in  whose  presence  no  conscience  has  ever 
been  able  to  sleep. 

E.  L.  P. 

Richmond,  Va. 


CONTENTS 

CBAPTBB  PAOB 

I.  His  Words  in  the  Light  of  His 

Soul 9 

n.  The  Letter  that  Killeth  ....     21 
in.  The  Spirit  that  Giveth  Life.  .     33 
IV.  The  Spirit  Back  of  Our  Deeds    49 
V.  The  Thing  that  Counts  with 

God 58 

VI.  Bringing  the  Question  Closer 

Home 68 

Vn.  What  Was  Christ's  Idea  of  In- 
dividual Responsibility?.  ...     79 

VIII.  Can  a  Christian  be  a  "  Slack- 
er "? 94 

IX.  What  Was  Christ's  Idea  of  the 

Value  of  Human  Life? 105 

X.  What    was    Christ's    Idea    of 

Peace? 116 

XL  What  Would  Jesus  Say  Today?  126 
XII.  What   Should  Be  the   Chris- 
tian's     Attitude      Toward 
War? 136 

7 


8  Contents 

XIII.  How  Far  Should  a  Christian 

Go? 146 

XIV.  The  Immediate  Business  before 

Us 155 

XV.  How  Can  We  Hasten  the  Day 

OF  Lasting  Peace.'^ 167 


HIS  WORDS  IN  THE  LIGHT  OF 
HIS  SOUL 

FOR  mental  fatigue  I  try  a  walk  in 
the  woods ;  but  for  mental  tangles 
I  like  a  walk  down  the  street. 
The  street  is  better  than  the  woods,  for 
you  cannot  go  many  blocks  without  meet- 
ing Life;  and  in  the  matter  of  untangling 
things,  Life,  I  have  found,  is  as  gifted  as 
a  deft-fingered  woman. 

The  other  day  as  I  wandered  through 
an  obscure  part  of  the  town  I  came  upon 
a  game  little  rascal  perched  upon  the 
stomach  of  a  big,  fat,  blubbering  coward. 
The  youngster  remained  upon  his  soft  seat 
until  the  situation  ceased  to  be  interesting 
and  then  sprang  to  his  feet.  The  big  boy 
slowly  picked  himself  up,  brushed  his 
clothes  and  started  off  without  a  word. 
The  little  rascal  gazed  after  the  retreating 


10  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

figure  a  moment,  then  sprang  after  it, 
seized  it  by  the  collar,  threw  it  backward 
to  the  ground  and  sat  upon  it  again. 
Three  times  while  I  stood  near,  that  pa- 
thetic figure  picked  itself  up,  brushed  its 
clothes  and  started  off;  and  three  times 
the  little  fellow  sprang  after  it,  seized  it 
by  the  collar,  threw  it  backward  to  the 
ground  and  sat  upon  it.     When  I  left — 

Do  I  mean  to  saj^  that  I  left  those  boys 
to  themselves? 

I  do.  I  left  without  a  word.  I  wanted 
to  do  something  but  I  could  think  of  noth- 
ing. I  can  think  of  nothing  now.  What 
could  I  have  done?  The  little  fellow  did 
not  need  my  help  and  what  the  big 
one  needed  only  Heaven  could  bestow. 
Besides,  I  was  sick.  I  was  sick  at  the 
stomach. 

It  occurred  to  me  afterwards  that  my 
stomach  may  have  done  that  big,  fat,  blub- 
bering boy  an  injustice.  How  did  I  know 
that  he  was  not  too  fat  to  fight?  I  have 
seen  boys  that  were  too  fat  to  fight. 

Also  nations. 

But  my  stomach  revolted  all  the  same. 

Afterwards  I  asked  myself  what  Jesus 


In  the  Light  of  His  Soul  11 

would  have  done.  It  was  a  puzzling 
question  and  I  soon  began  to  look  for  an 
easier  one.  I  asked  myself  how  Jesus 
would  have  felt.  That  was  easier — much 
easier.  I  could  ansAver  that.  I  was  as 
sure  as  I  had  ever  been  sure  of  anything 
that  I  knew  exactly  how  he  would  have 
felt. 

And  then  I  became  sure  of  something 
else.  I  had  been  thinking  of  this  war 
question  and  now  I  was  thinking  of  it 
again,  and  I  noticed  that  I  was  looking  at 
it  from  another  angle.  And  one  problem  at 
least  had  disappeared.     .     .     . 

So  far  as  we  know,  Jesus  never  discussed 
the  war  question.  I  do  not  mean  that  he 
has  left  us  no  light  upon  it.  He  has  left 
us  a  great  deal  of  light  upon  it.  But  he 
did  not  discuss  it.  When  you  come  to 
think  of  it  there  was  no  reason  why  he 
should  discuss  it.  He  could  do  better: 
he  could  settle  it.     And  he  did  settle  it. 

Not  merely  nor  mainly  by  what  he  said, 
but  by  what  he  was. 

The  Man  that  was  behind  his  words  set- 
tled it.     .     .     . 


12  WhatDid  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

It  is  amazing  what  a  mess  we  have  made 
of  some  of  the  Master's  teachings.  Not 
long  ago  I  was  startled  by  the  shouting 
headlines  of  an  evening  paper  proclaim- 
ing that  Lloyd- George  had  announced 
that  peace  was  in  sight.  There  was  a  bliss- 
ful time  when  I  could  easily  take  all  head- 
lines at  their  face  value;  but  the  age  of 
innocence  is  long  since  passed,  and  I  had 
little  difficulty  in  restraining  my  feelings 
until  I  could  get  beyond  the  reporter's 
general  version  of  what  was  said  down  to 
the  premier's  own  exact  words.  From  the 
headlines  I  had  a  right  to  expect  that 
Lloyd-George  had  made  an  announcement 
either  that  victory  was  at  hand  or  that  the 
war  powers  had  come  to  an  understand- 
ing; but  when  I  got  into  the  body  of  the 
article  I  found  that  he  had  made  no  an- 
nouncement at  all.  He  was  talking  to  a 
company  of  Americans  and  he  was  in  a 
great  blaze  of  enthusiasm.  Now  that 
America  had  come  to  the  help  of  the 
allies,  victory,  he  declared,  was  sure;  and 
in  a  fervid  climax  he  shouted,  "I  can  see 
peace  coming!"    That  was  all. 

The  enterprising  newspaper  man  who 


In  the  Light  of  His  Soul  13 

interpreted  this  very  innocent  and  uncal- 
culating  prophetic  vision  of  peace  as  an 
official  announcement  that  the  war  was 
about  to  end,  did  no  greater  violence  to 
the  words  of  Lloj^d- George  than  our 
American  pacifists  have  been  doing  to  the 
words  of  Jesus  ever  since  the  great  war 
began.  In  such  times  as  these  when  rea- 
son is  always  wabbling  upon  its  throne, 
one  does  not  have  to  be  an  expert  casuist 
to  make  things  mean  what  one  wants  them 
to  mean.  If  there  is  no  chance  to  pack 
the  jury  one  only  needs  to  stir  up  enough 
feeling  to  becloud  the  issue.  That  will  do 
quite  as  well. 

If  a  committee  composed  of  men  who 
wish  to  misjudge  me  should  be  appointed 
to  find  out  just  how  I  stand  on  certain 
moral  questions,  I  should  know  in  advance 
just  what  they  were  going  to  do.  I  should 
know  that  they  were  going  to  examine  my 
words,  not  to  find  out  the  truth,  but  to 
find  support  for  the  verdict  which  they 
had  already  adopted.  And  I  should  know 
the  method  they  would  pursue.  They 
would  take  such  words  of  mine  as  they 
chose  out  of  their  setting,  arrange  them 


14  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

to  suit  their  purpose  and  insist  upon 
interpreting  them  hterally.  And  they 
would  confine  themseh'^es  to  my  words: 
they  would  not  so  much  as  take  a  look  at 
me.  They  would  not  ask  a  word  about 
my  reputation,  much  less  my  character; 
they  would  not  want  to  know  anything 
about  my  life;  they  would  not  care  a  fig 
about  my  thoughts,  motives  or  the  inmost 
desires  of  my  soul.  They  would  only  ask 
what  I  said,  and  then  they  would  isolate 
my  words  and  hold  me  to  their  literal 
meaning,  utterly  regardless  of  the  circum- 
stances under  which  they  were  uttered  or 
of  the  spirit  that  was  evidently  behind 
them.  If  they  wanted  to  show,  for  in- 
stance, that  I  believed  in  the  enslavement 
of  women  they  would  bring  forward  cer- 
tain foolish  remarks  concerning  militant 
suffragists  which  I  had  made  on  sundry 
occasions,  perhaps  with  humorous  intent. 
If  they  wanted  to  show  that  I  believed  in 
lynching  they  would  recall  the  fact  that 
I  once  declared  that  Villa  ought  to  be  shot. 
If  they  wanted  to  condemn  me  as  an  un- 
feeling brute  they  would  bring  out  the 
number  of  times  I  had  refused  to  give 


In  the  Light  of  His  Soul  15 

pennies  to  street  beggars  M'ho  smoke 
cigars.  In  the  end  they  would  make  me 
out  a  very  bad  man. 

If  I  should  be  dissatisfied  with  their 
verdict,  as  I  undoubtedly  would  be,  and 
should  ask  for  another  hearing,  and  my 
case  should  be  referred  to  a  committee  of 
partial  friends,  I  should  know  what  meth- 
ods they  would  adopt  also.  They  would 
adopt  the  very  same  methods  that  were 
used  by  my  enemies,  except  that  they 
would  interpret  all  my  objectionable  ut- 
terances figuratively  instead  of  literally. 
They  would  show,  for  instance,  that  my 
foolish  remarks  against  the  feminist  move- 
ment were  really  very  cleverly  constructed 
compliments  (metaphorical  of  course)  of 
a  most  rare,  delicate  and  chivalrous  type. 

Frankly,  I  would  just  as  soon  fall  into 
the  hands  of  my  enemies  as  into  the  hands 
of  my  partial  friends.  My  enemies  would 
make  me  out  a  knave,  but  my  partial 
friends  would  make  me  out  a  fool.  And 
that  would  be  quite  as  bad.  There  is  only 
one  way  in  which  a  man  can  find  out  how 
I  really  stand  on  any  question:  he  must 
take  my  words  on  that  question  in  con- 


16  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War?  • 

nection  with  their  surroundings  and  he 
must  take  them  in  connection  with  me. 
He  must  not  only  know  my  utterances 
but  he  must  know  the  spirit  that  uttered 
them.  No  man  can  rightly  interpret  my 
words  regardless  of  my  spirit,  and  I  have 
no  right  to  attempt  to  interpret  another 
man's  words  regardless  of  his  spirit. 

All  this  ought  to  go  without  saying ;  yet 
for  a  thousand  years  and  more  when  the 
friends  of  Jesus  have  undertaken  to  find 
out  how  he  stood  on  a  given  question  they 
have  usually  forgotten  the  obhgations 
both  of  partial  friends  and  of  impartial 
truthseekers  and  insisted  upon  examining 
his  words  by  methods  which  no  one  but  an 
enemy  would  be  expected  to  employ. 

There  is  no  light  like  the  light  of  the 
human  eye,  but  if  you  wanted  light  you 
would  not  go  to  an  eye  hospital  and  bring 
home  a  pocketful  of  eyes  that  have  been 
plucked  from  their  sockets.  There  are  a 
few  sayings  of  Jesus  which  are  as  com- 
plete in  themselves  as  the  stars  that  shine 
by  their  own  light ;  but  most  of  his  sayings 
are  like  eyes:  the  moment  you  take  them 
out  of  their  sockets  the  light  is  gone. 


In  the  Light  of  His  Soul  17 

Yet  for  a  thousand  years  and  more  we 
Christians  have  been  trying  to  get  at  the 
mind  of  our  ISIaster  by  pulHng  his  words 
out  of  their  sockets  and  examining  them 
under  the  microscope  as  isolated  units. 

We  might  have  been  better  employed 
in  trying  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  uni- 
verse by  throwing  a  hatful  of  A  B  C 
blocks  into  the  air  and  spelHng  out  the 
results  as  they  fell  to  the  floor. 

To  know  how  Jesus  stands  on  this  war 
question  we  must  go  beyond  his  words. 
We  are  not  to  pass  by  them,  but  we  must 
go  beyond  them.  We  must  go  beyond 
them  to  their  surroundings,  and  then  we 
must  go  straight  through  them  to  the  soul 
that  is  behind  them.  We  must  go  straight 
through  them  to  the  Master  himself. 

If  Christ  should  come  among  us  today 
and  we  should  look  into  his  face  I  am  sure 
we  should  have  no  difficulty  in  deciding 
where  he  stood.  We  would  no  longer  ex- 
amine his  words  as  isolated  units:  we 
would  listen  to  them  as  they  came  one 
after  another  from  his  hps.  We  would 
listen  to  them  as  they  came  up  out  of  his 
soul. 


18  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

We  should  not  need  to  ask  him  how  he 
felt  about  that  big,  fat,  blubbering  coward 
lying  in  the  street.  We  should  not  be 
puzzled  to  know  what  he  would  do  if  he 
should  come  upon  a  beastly  fellow  in  the 
act  of  beating  the  life  out  of  his  neighbor's 
child;  if  he  should  meet  a  group  of  fat, 
smug  hypocrites  dragging  after  them  a 
weeping  woman  who  had  been  taken  in 
sin ;  if  he  should  overhear  a  brutal  Iscariot 
sneer  at  a  loving  Mary  for  anointing  her 
Master's  feet;  if  he  should  drop  in  at  a 
church  where  men  were  making  a  pretense 
of  worshipping  God  for  gain ;  if  he  should 
happen  in  at  a  king's  court,  or  a  sweat- 
shop, or  a  broker's  office,  or  a  military 
camp  where  a  tyrant  was  literally  or  fig- 
uratively grinding  his  heel  into  the  face  of 
a  prostrate  fellow  man. 

We  should  know  what  he  would  do. 
And  we  should  know  it  not  because  we 
had  just  looked  into  what  he  said  on  one 
occasion  about  turning  the  other  cheek, 
but  because  we  were  looking  into  his  face. 

Take  the  words  of  Jesus  which  seem  to 
bear  on  this  war  question  out  of  their  set- 
ting— take  them  apart  from  the  general 


In  the  Light  of  His  Soul  19 

tenor  of  his  teaching,  apart  from  his  mind 
and  heart  and  hfe,  apart  from  himself, 
and  they  have  no  more  light  in  them  than 
eyeballs  torn  out  of  their  sockets  or  elec- 
tric-light bulbs  disconnected  from  the 
wires.  It  is  only  when  we  make  connec- 
tion between  the  Man  and  his  words  that 
the  light  comes.  And  in  that  light — the 
light  that  comes  from  the  Man  himself — 
there  is  no  longer  any  doubt.  The  Man 
himself — the  Man  who  came  to  rescue  hu- 
man beings  from  the  low  habitations  of 
brutes  and  lead  them  to  the  heights  of 
manhood  in  the  kingdom  of  God ;  the  Man 
who  knew  that  if  human  beings  did  not 
achieve  manhood  after  the  divine  pattern 
according  to  their  divine  destiny  the  world 
would  go  to  the  scrapheap  and  the  king- 
dom of  God  would  be  without  inhabitants ; 
the  Man  who  looked  upon  human  beings 
not  only  with  infinite  pity  for  their  weak- 
ness and  cowardice,  but  with  infinite  long- 
ing to  lift  them  out  of  their  weakness  and 
cowardice  to  his  own  heroic  height;  the 
Man  whose  indignation  against  the  op- 
pressor was  onlj^  surpassed  by  his  compas- 
sion  for  the   oppressed;   the   Man   who 


20  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

steadfastly  refused  to  lift  a  finger  for  his 
selfish  interests,  yet  never  hesitated  to 
throw  himself  into  the  breach  for  others — 
that  Man  has  settled  this  war  question 
forever. 


II 

THE  LETTER  THAT  KILLETH 

IN  his  walks  abroad  Jesus  was  always 
followed  by  a  crowd.  It  was  a  ter- 
ribly hungry  crowd.  Now  and  then 
he  would  turn  and  speak  to  them  and  his 
words  would  be  as  the  handful  of  corn 
which  the  farmer  throws  out  now  and  then 
to  toll  his  pigs  along.  They  would  fol- 
low him  all  day  if  he  would  only  give  them 
a  word  now  and  then.  Sometimes  his 
sayings  would  melt  their  hearts;  some- 
times they  would  pierce  them;  sometimes 
they  would  confuse  them ;  but  they  would 
take  everything  he  gave  them  and  follow 
on  for  more. 

One  day  he  suddenly  turned  about  and 
with  a  severity  which  must  have  startled 
them  said: 

"If  a  man  cometh  unto  me  and  hateth 
not  his  own  father,  and  mother,  and  wife, 
and  children,  and  brethren,  and  sisters, 

21 


22  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot  be 
my  disciple." 

It  was  a  horrible  speech.  At  least  so 
it  would  have  sounded  in  our  ears.  If  a 
teacher  of  a  new  religion  should  utter  such 
a  sentiment  before  an  American  audience 
today  he  would  be  hissed  off  the  platform. 
If  the  people  who  listened  to  Jesus  that 
day  had  listened  with  our  ears  they  would 
have  done  worse.  They  would  have  fairly 
howled  with  rage.  They  would  have 
cast  dust  into  the  air.  They  would  have 
thrown  stones  at  him.  They  would  have 
cursed  him  as  a  blasphemer;  for  in  their 
minds  reverence  for  parents  was  insep- 
arable from  reverence  for  God. 

But  they  were  Orientals  and  they  lis- 
tened with  Oriental  ears.  And  because 
they  listened  with  Orientals  ears  nothing 
happened.  As  the  last  word  fell  from  his 
lips  he  turned  and  went  on  his  way,  and 
the  multitude  followed  on  quietly  as  be- 
fore. 

No  doubt  his  severity  had  startled  them, 
but  they  were  not  worried.  They  were 
not  worried  because  they  knew  how  to 
take  him.     They  had  heard  him  before. 


The  Letter  that  Killeth  2S 

They  had  looked  into  his  face  before. 
Time  and  again  they  had  caught  a  ghmpse 
of  his  soul;  and  when  you  once  get  a 
glimpse  of  a  man's  soul  you  will  interpret 
his  words  by  what  you  see  in  his  soul  and 
not  take  them  as  they  appear  on  their  faces. 
And  in  their  Teacher's  soul  they  had  never 
seen  anything  but  love.  They  knew  that 
he  loved  everybody  and  they  knew  that  if 
there  was  anytliing  in  the  world  that  he 
hated  it  was  hate.  He  would  not  even 
let  them  hate  their  enemies.  He  even 
demanded  that  they  should  love  their  en- 
emies. It  was  impossible  to  conceive  that 
he  would  have  them  hate  their  own  fathers 
and  mothers.  Whatever  he  might  mean, 
he  could  not  mean  that. 

And  that  was  not  all.  They  not  only 
knew  what  he  did  not  mean  but  they  knew 
what  he  did  mean.  Being  Orientals  they 
were  accustomed  to  speeches  of  that  sort. 
They  talked  that  way  themselves.  They 
had  to  talk  that  way.  Everybody  in  the 
East  talks  that  way  today.  Everybody 
talks  in  pictures,  especially  pictures  of 
violent  and  startling  contrasts.  It  is  the 
only  way  you  can  make  yourself  under- 


24  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

stood.  If  I  wanted  to  impress  an  Amer- 
ican with  the  height  of  the  mountains  near 
my  home  I  would  give  the  exact  figures; 
but  if  I  were  talking  to  a  Syrian  I  would 
give  him  no  figures  at  all:  I  would  only 
give  him  a  figure  of  speech.  I  would 
point  to  his  little  mountains  and  I  would 
say:  "Ah!  you  should  see  my  mountains. 
Those  little  hills  yonder  are  mere  holes  in 
the  ground."  And  he  would  understand. 
If  I  should  say  that  my  mountains  rise 
ten  thousand  feet  above  the  level  of  the 
sea  it  would  mean  nothing  to  him  at  all. 

And  so  when  Jesus  told  the  crowd  that 
day  that  if  a  man  hated  not  his  father  and 
mother  he  could  not  be  his  disciple,  they 
knew  what  he  was  trying  to  do.  They 
knew  that  he  was  simply  trying  to  impress 
upon  them  an  important  teaching  by 
means  of  a  picture  of  violent  and  startling 
contrasts.  And  the  moment  they  looked 
upon  the  picture  they  saw  what  it  meant. 
They  saw  a  man  so  bent  upon  following 
his  teacher  that  he  was  even  willing  to  re- 
nounce his  own  father  and  mother.  It 
did  not  suggest  hate;  it  only  suggested 
devotion — wonderful   devotion.     And   so 


The  Letter  that  Killeth  25 

they  knew  that  what  the  Master  was 
thinking  about  was  not  how  they  should 
feel  toward  their  fathers  and  mothers,  but 
how  they  should  feel  toward  him.  He 
was  not  thinking  of  hate  at  all;  he  was 
thinking  of  love.  And  they  knew  that 
what  he  meant  was  not  that  they  must 
hate  others,  but  that  they  must  love  him 
and  that  they  must  love  him  supremely. 
"Unless  you  put  me  before  all  things;  un- 
less I  am  everything  to  you,  you  cannot 
be  my  disciple." 

And  they  did  not  worry.  They  no 
more  worried  over  it  than  an  Oriental 
bridegroom  would  worry  over  his  bride's 
threat  to  kill  herself  if  he  did  not  hate  all 
the  women  in  the  world  except  herself. 

Nor  do  we  worry  over  it  today.  Literal 
as  we  Americans  are,  we  never  have  any 
difficulty  over  this  saying  except  in  our 
childhood.  In  childhood  it  horrifies  us, 
but  as  soon  as  we  are  old  enough  to  fall 
in  love  we  begin  to  take  it  as  a  matter  of 
course.  We  know  that  it  is  something 
about  love  and  we  still  have  sense  enough 
to  except  the  language  of  love  from  lit- 
eral interpretation.     We  talk  business  as 


26  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

Occidentals,  but  we  still  talk  love  as 
Orientals.  And  when  one  speaks  of  love 
with  what  men  call  Oriental  extravagance 
we  understand.  We  know  that  our  literal 
speech  was  made  for  such  ideas  as  black 
is  black  and  two  plus  two  equals  four,  and 
that  love  can  no  more  be  expressed  in  lit- 
eral terms  than  heaven  can  be  pictured  in 
red  and  gold.  When  a  man  says  that  two 
plus  two  equals  four  we  know  that  he  is 
speaking  in  the  language  of  science,  which 
is  Occidental,  not  Oriental,  and  we  inter- 
pret his  words  accordingly.  When  he 
speaks  of  love  we  know  that  he  is  using 
the  language  of  love,  which  is  Oriental 
and  not  Occidental,  and  we  interpret  his 
words  accordingly.  We  no  more  think  of 
putting  a  literal  interpretation  upon  a 
bride's  threat  to  kill  herself  if  her  husband 
ever  looks  at  another  woman  than  we 
would  place  a  figurative  interpretation 
upon  the  notice  from  the  bank  that  our 
account  is  overdrawn,  and  must  be  made 
good  before  three  o'clock.  For  a  like  rea- 
son we  no  more  think  of  placing  a  literal 
interpretation  upon  Christ's  startling  say- 
ing about  hating  father  and  mother  than 


The  Letter  that  Killeth  27 

we  would  think  of  placing  a  figurative  in- 
terpretation upon  his  flat  declaration  that 
he  must  suffer  many  things  and  be  killed 
and  be  raised  again  the  third  day. 

With  this  hard  saying  before  us  it  is  as 
plain  as  the  sun  that  we  can  no  more  get 
at  the  mind  of  Jesus  by  interpreting  his 
words  apart  from  himself  than  we  can  get 
at  the  mind  of  anybody  else  by  interpret- 
ing his  words  apart  from  himself.  We 
never  think  of  cutting  a  friend's  words 
loose  from  his  mind,  his  spirit,  his  life,  and 
interpreting  them  by  themselves.  My 
words  are  as  much  a  part  of  myself  as  the 
hairs  of  my  head,  and  I  feel  that  I  have 
a  right  to  demand  that  such  hairs  as  I  have 
shall  be  judged  by  the  way  they  look  on 
my  head  and  not  by  the  way  they  would 
look  in  the  clutch  of  a  baby's  fist.  If  I 
am  told  that  my  friend  Wilkins  in  a 
speech  the  other  night  gave  utterance  to 
a  very  heartless  sentiment,  I  do  not  take 
his  reported  saying  into  a  laboratory  and 
analyze  it  by  itself.  The  fact  is  I  don't 
try  to  analyze  it  at  all.  I  simply  put  it 
in  Wilkins's  lips  (mentally  of  course)  and 
take  a  good  look  at  Wilkins.     I  look  at 


28  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

the  corners  of  his  mouth  to  see  if  he  is  jok- 
ing. Then  I  look  at  liis  eyes.  Then  I 
look  through  his  eyes  down  into  his  soul. 
If  I  cannot  get  a  good  view  of  his  soul  I 
think  a  little  while  about  what  I  know  of 
his  life  and  character.  I  remember  that 
there  never  was  a  man  with  a  bigger  heart 
than  Wilkins.  And  then  I  decide  that 
whatever  Wilkins  may  have  meant,  cer- 
tainly he  did  not  mean  what  his  words  say 
when  taken  by  themselves.  And  I  refuse 
to  take  them  by  themselves.  It  is  impos- 
sible for  me  to  take  my  friend's  words  lit- 
erally if  his  literal  words  give  the  lie  to  all 
that  I  know  of  his  life  and  character. 

I  do  not  even  treat  a  stranger's  words 
that  way.  If  a  man  sitting  near  me  on 
the  car  gives  utterance  to  a  rather  violent 
sentiment  I  do  not  immediately  conclude 
that  he  is  an  anarchist.  I  must  at  least 
glance  at  the  corners  of  his  mouth  to  see 
if  he  is  joking. 

As  a  rule  it  is  only  when  we  are  out  of 
humor  and  want  to  misjudge  people,  or 
want  to  have  our  way  to  prove  our  point, 
that  we  insist  upon  taking  their  words  ac- 
cording to  the  letter  and  not  according  to 


The  Letter  that  Killeth  29 

the  spirit.  Indeed  I  can  think  of  but  one 
exception.  That  exception,  strange  to 
say,  is  where  the  words  we  want  to  inter- 
pret happen  to  be  the  words  of  Jesus. 
Aside  from  that  horrible  saying  about  hat- 
ing father  and  mother  and  two  or  three 
other  hard  sayings,  we  usually  feel  that  we 
must  take  his  words  literally  whether  we 
are  in  a  bad  humor  or  not.     .     .     . 

With  this  horrible  saying  before  our 
eyes  we  know  perfectly  well  that  it  is  the 
letter  that  killeth  and  the  spirit  that  giveth 
life;  yet  the  moment  we  turn  from  it  we 
forget  and  fall  back  into  our  old  habit  of 
saying  that  when  Jesus  commanded  us  to 
turn  the  other  cheek  he  must  have  meant 
exactly  what  he  said  or  nothing.  We  can 
read  that  if  a  man  hate  not  his  father  or 
mother  he  cannot  be  "my  disciple"  and  still 
know  that  we  are  his  disciples,  though  we 
love  our  fathers  and  mothers  dearly;  but 
when  we  come  to  the  passage  about  turn- 
ing the  other  cheek,  both  cheeks  turn  pale 
and  we  close  the  Bible  with  a  sigh  and 
spend  the  rest  of  the  day  wondering 
whether  it  is  worth  while  to  try  to  be  a 


30  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

Christian  at  all,  especially  in  war  times. 
We  simply  cannot  turn  the  other  cheek 
and  we  do  not  see  how  we  can  be  Chris- 
tians until  we  do.  And  we  do  not  see 
how  we  can  be  Christians  if  we  don't. 
W^e  know  that  if  we  do  there  wull  no  longer 
be  any  manhood  in  us,  and  we  know 
that  Jesus  came  to  transform  human  be- 
ings into  men;  and  certainly  we  cannot 
be  men  if  we  have  no  manhood.  And 
there  we  are ! 

It  is  pathetic.     .     .     . 

When  the  pacifist  lecturer  told  his  in- 
telligent Christian  audience  that  Christ's 
command  to  turn  the  other  cheek  meant 
exactly  what  it  said  or  it  meant  nothing, 
half  the  intelligent  Christians  in  the  audi- 
ence dropped  their  heads  for  shame.  If 
they  had  had  a  Christian  badge  on  their 
breasts  I  fancy  they  would  have  unpinned 
it  and  slipped  it  into  their  pockets.  No- 
body thought  of  that  hard  saying  about 
hating  father  and  mother.  Nobody 
thought  of  asking  why  the  lecturer  in- 
sisted that  they  should  take  it  literally. 
Nobody  ventured  to  suggest  that  if  it  was 


The  Letter  that  Killeth  31 

taken  in  anj^  other  way  he  would  have  no 
way  to  prove  his  point.  Nobody  thought 
of  asking  whether  the  saying  taken  liter- 
ally would  harmonize  with  the  general 
tenor  of  Christ's  teaching,  his  spirit,  his 
life.  Nobody  thought  to  ask  where  Jesus 
would  find  men  for  his  kingdom  if  his 
own  followers  should  renounce  their  man- 
hood for  a  yellow  streak.  Nobody  ever 
thought  to  ask  whether  Jesus  himself  ever 
turned  the  other  cheek. 

One  wonders  why. 

What  is  the  meaning  of  this  depressing, 
helpless  feeling  that  comes  over  us  every 
time  we  are  told  that  we  must  take  the 
words  of  Jesus  literally?  One  wonders 
how  often  we  have  asked  this  question  and 
then  hurried  on  as  if  we  were  afraid  some- 
body would  answer  it.  For  my  part  I 
should  really  like  to  know.  I  should  like 
to  know  why  so  many  good  people  feel 
like  culprits  whenever  they  read  that  part 
of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  that  seems  to 
tell  us  that  we  should  not  resist  evil  but 
should  turn  the  other  cheek.  I  should 
like  to  know  why  we  find  it  so  hard  to  rid 
ourselves  of  this  horrible  suspicion  that  we 


32  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

are  neither  brave  nor  honest  or  we  would 
obey  the  commands  of  Jesus  hterally.  It 
cannot  be  because  he  has  told  us  to  take 
his  words  literally.  He  has  told  us  no 
such  thing.  Can  it  be  because  it  has  been 
so  often  and  so  solemnly  affirmed  in  our 
hearing  that  the  man  who  refuses  to  take 
the  words  of  Jesus  literally  is  a  coward? 
Has  it  gotten  on  our  nerves? 


Ill 

THE  SPIRIT  THAT  GIVETH 
LIFE 

OUR  modern  civilization  has  given 
us  some  strange  ideals.  For  a 
hundred  years  and  more  the 
world's  ideal  Christian  has  been  a  dear, 
saintly  old  lady  with  a  pale  face  and  thin, 
blue-veined  hands  who  spends  most  of  her 
time  sitting  in  an  easy-chair  with  her  Bible 
in  her  lap  trying  to  think  of  kind  things 
to  say  about  the  devil,  and  occasionally 
protesting  in  a  gentle  voice  and  with 
graceful  diction  against  the  cruel  custom 
of  killing  flies.  We  never  question  that 
ideal  because  it  is  a  man's  picture  of  his 
mother  in  her  old  age;  and  a  man's  picture 
of  his  mother  in  her  old  age  is  not  open  to 
question. 

I  do  not  know  whether  we  got  our  mod- 
ern picture  of  Christ  from  this  ideal  or  not 
— I  rather  think  we  did;  but  the  two  pic- 
tures are  wonderfully  alike.     For  a  hun- 

33 


34  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

dred  years  and  more  milHons  of  people 
have  been  thinking  of  Jesus  as  a  dear, 
saintly,  harmless  soul,  of  quiet  mien  and 
gentle  speech,  who  likes  to  think  up  kind 
things  to  say  about  the  devil  and  who 
never  protests  against  anything  except  the 
cruel  custom  of  killing  flies. 

This  is  the  Christ  of  our  Sunday  after- 
noon dreams. 

The  Christ  of  history  was  the  bravest 
fighter  the  world  has  ever  known. 

I  do  not  say  that  he  was  not  gentle  and 
kind  and  tender-hearted.  I  have  seen 
some  gentle  and  kind  and  tender-hearted 
women  who  were  tremendous  fighters. 
And  Jesus,  though  the  gentlest  and  kind- 
est and  most  tender-hearted  of  men,  was 
a  tremendous  fighter. 

I  do  not  like  to  think  of  him  as  a  war- 
rior, but  he  began  his  life-work  by  declar- 
ing war  against  the  literalists,  and  he 
fought  them  until  his  back  was  against  the 
cross. 

There  are  glimpses  of  this  war  all  the 
way  through  the  gospel  story.  We  know 
how  it  came  about.  He  had  come  to  res- 
cue men  from  the  depths  of  sin  and  to  lift 


The  Spirit  that  Giveth  Life        35 

them  up  into  the  kingdom  of  God  where 
they  might  achieve  their  divine  destiny  as 
sons  of  God.  He  had  found  his  own  peo- 
ple in  double  bondage.  They  were  bound 
not  only  by  sin  but  by  tyrants.  We  usu- 
ally think  of  them  as  being  in  bondage  to 
Rome;  but  the  yoke  which  Rome  had  put 
upon  them  was  a  trifle  compared  with  that 
which  had  been  bound  upon  them  by  their 
own  teachers.  Rome  had  subjugated  the 
country  as  a  whole,  but  the  rabbis  had 
subjugated  the  people — man  by  man. 
Long  before  Jesus  came  the  rabbis  had 
lost  their  spiritual  vision  and  become  litcr- 
ahsts.  When  a  religious  teacher  loses  his 
spiritual  vision  he  usually  becomes  a  lit- 
eralist.  There  is  nothing  else  he  can  be- 
come except  an  apostate.  And  being  an 
apostate  is  not  so  pleasant  as  remaining 
in  the  faith,  so  long  as  one  is  allowed  to 
teach  according  to  the  letter  and  not  ac- 
cording to  the  spirit.  And  the  rabbis  had 
followed  the  lines  of  easiest  resistance. 
Having  lost  their  spiritual  vision,  and  be- 
ing no  longer  able  to  look  beneath  the 
letter  of  the  law  to  its  spirit,  they  had  con- 
tented themselves  with  looking  on  the  out- 


36  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

ward  appearance,  and  they  had  revised 
their  teaching  accordingly. 

When  a  religious  teacher  has  nothing 
left  but  the  letter  of  the  law  he  usually 
develops  an  extraordinary  zeal  for  it,  and 
this  invariably  makes  him  a  tyrant.  And 
the  rabbis,  with  certain  notable  and  noble 
exceptions,  had  become  tyrants.  The 
rabbi  of  our  own  day  treats  his  people  as 
brothers;  but  if  we  can  give  any  credence 
to  history  the  average  rabbi  of  Christ's 
day  treated  his  people  as  oxen.  And  the 
people  of  Christ's  day,  being  too  weak 
after  centuries  of  fiery  trial  to  choose  their 
own  paths,  quietly  submitted  their  necks 
to  the  yoke  that  was  held  out  to  them  and 
consumed  in  silence  such  fodder  as  their 
masters  chose  to  set  before  them. 

Let  us  not  discuss  the  fodder.  That 
subject  is  too  pathetic.  All  we  need  to 
remember  is  that  for  centuries  the  rabbis 
had  been  piling  up  their  literal  interpre- 
tations around  the  law  until  the  law  itself 
was  now  almost  entirely  hidden  from  view, 
and  that  this  great  mass  of  hteral  inter- 
pretations was  to  the  law  as  chaff  to 
wheat.     This  is  not  the  whole  truth,  but 


The  Spirit  that  Giveth  Life         37 

it  is  not  necessary  to  remember  more. 
The  whole  truth  is  worse:  the  mass  was 
not  only  as  chaff;  it  was  chaff  and  the 
chaff  was  full  of  poisonous  weeds. 

Feed  a  people  on  the  mere  letter  of 
God's  law  and  you  will  soon  reduce  them 
to  spiritual  starvation:  and  when  they 
have  been  well  starved  you  can  put  a 
chain  about  their  necks  and  lead  them 
whither  you  will.  That  was  what  the  rab- 
bis had  done  and  when  Jesus  came  they 
were  leading  the  people  about,  as  I  have 
said,  like  dumb  oxen. 

And  they  were  leading  them  in  utter 
darkness.  They  had  put  out  the  lamp 
which  heaven  had  let  down  to  them.  They 
had  made  the  truth  of  God  a  lie.  They 
had  deprived  the  law  of  its  soul.  They 
had  deprived  righteousness  of  its  mean- 
ing; black  had  become  white,  and  religion 
had  been  turned  into  a  shrewd  device,  de- 
signed to  enable  power-loving  rabbis  to 
hold  a  man  by  the  ear  with  one  hand  while 
playing  tricks  with  his  conscience  with  the 
other. 

It  was  plain  to  Jesus  that  he  could 
never  reach  the  chains  of  sin  which  bound 


38  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

his  people's  hearts  until  he  had  broken  the 
chains  of  tyranny  which  bound  their 
minds,  and  the  moment  he  succeeded  in 
winning  the  ear  of  the  people  he  set  to  work 
to  rescue  them  from,  their  tyrants.  And 
then  the  war  began.  It  was  a  bloodless 
fight  until  just  before  the  end,  but  it  was 
one  of  the  fiercest  fights  the  world  has  ever 
seen.  We  like  to  think  of  those  wonder- 
ful years  as  beautiful  years  in  which  the 
Prince  of  Peace  went  softly  about  in  the 
holy  calm  of  vespers,  cooling  fevered 
brows,  healing  broken  hearts  and  blessing 
little  children.  But  the  ministry  of  Jesus 
was  not  like  that.  It  was  rather  like  the 
fiery  trial  of  a  man  whose  house  is  beset 
by  a  pack  of  wolves,  and  who  is  trying  to 
feed  his  hungry  children  and  save  them 
from  the  hungrj-  beasts  at  the  same  time. 
How  strange  that  we  should  have  put 
aside  all  those  wonderful  pictures  of 
Christ  the  Hero  throwing  himself  into  the 
breach  for  his  oppressed  people  and  have 
chosen  to  remember  him  only  as  he  looked 
in  the  midst  of  his.  tender  ministrations 
of  mercy  to  the  needy !  How  strange  that 
we  should  have  forgotten  those  terrible 


The  Spirit  that  Giveth  Life        39 

moments  of  single-handed  conflict  with 
that  hungry  pack  of  wolves,  the  tyrannical 
Pharisees,  who  through  all  his  ministry 
were  either  hanging  upon  the  outskirts  of 
the  crowd  or  howling  at  his  heels !     .     .     . 

All  through  that  terrible  struggle  to 
rescue  his  people  from  the  grip  of  the  rab- 
bis the  Master  concentrated  his  fire  upon 
literalism  and  the  externalism  and  hyi)oc- 
risy  which  invariably  attend  it.  I  do  not 
recall  a  single  conflict  with  the  Pharisees 
in  the  presence  of  his  people  in  which  he 
did  not  try  to  disarm  his  antagonists, 
either  by  showing  the  people  how  literal- 
ism made  the  truth  of  God  a  lie  or  by 
pointing  out  to  them  its  deadly  fruits — 
externalism  and  hypocrisy — as  shown  in 
the  lives  of  the  Pharisees  themselves.  In 
a  hundred  ways  he  tried  to  show  them  how 
the  rabbis,  by  conforming  themselves  to 
the  letter  of  the  law,  not  only  took  the 
force  out  of  many  of  the  Father's  com- 
mands, but  often  put  into  his  law  com- 
mands which  he  never  thought  of  giving 
and  Vi'hich  were  utterly  abhorrent  to  his 
spirit.     "It   is   utterly   wrong!"   we   can 


40  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

hear  him  saying.  "It  is  not  the  letter  that 
counts  but  the  spirit.  God  looks  not  on 
the  outward  appearance  but  upon  the 
heart.  If  you  look  only  upon  the  out- 
ward appearance  of  the  law  you  will  look 
only  upon  the  outward  appearance  of  your 
lives  and  you  will  become  like  your  teach- 
ers.   And  then — 

"W"oe  unto  you,  scribes  and  Pharisees, 
hypocrites!  for  ye  are  like  unto  whited 
sepulchres,  which  outwardly  appear  beau- 
tiful, but  inwardly  are  full  of  dead  men's 
bones,  and  of  all  uncleanness."     .     .     . 

And  now  we  come  to  one  of  the  most 
amazing  facts  in  the  history  of  human 
folly.  After  all  his  terrific  battles  against 
the  letter  that  killeth  and  in  behalf  of  the 
spirit  that  giveth  life,  the  bravest  and  most 
persistent  antagonist  of  literalism  the 
world  ever  saw  is  still  quoted  by  his  own 
people  in  this  year  of  grace  and  light  as 
— a  hteralist! 

And  most  of  the  quotations  are  from 
his  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the  most  power- 
ful protest  against  literalism  ever  uttered. 

Aside  from  their  appeal  to  our  greed 


The  Spirit  that  Giveth  Life         41 

for  material  comfort  the  most  powerful 
weapons  used  by  the  pacifists  to  reduce 
this  nation  to  the  bondage  of  selfishness 
are  two  kindred  sayings  cut  out  of  this 
wonderful  sermon  against  literalism  and 
used  as  isolated  and  literal  statements  to 
show  how  vehemently  Jesus  opposed  war. 
These  sayings  are : 

"Whosoever  shall  smite  thee  on  thy 
right  cheek,  turn  to  him  the  other  also." 
And— 

"Resist  not  evil." 

These  two  sayings,  which  somehow  flash 
like  swords  above  the  heads  of  the  audi- 
ence in  every  pacifistic  onslaught  even  when 
they  do  not  issue  from  the  lips  of  the  lec- 
turer himself,  have  undoubtedly  wrought 
greater  slaughter,  especially  among  the 
elect,  than  all  their  other  weapons  com- 
bined. Yet  if  we  would  only  deprive 
them  of  their  literal  interpretation  and 
put  them  back  into  their  places  long 
enough  to  take  a  look  at  their  surround- 
ings, we  should  quickly  see  that  if  they 
were  taken  in  their  true  sense  they  would 
be  of  no  more  use  as  weapons  in  the  hands 
of  a  pacifist  than  a  couple  of  roses. 


42  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

What  was  Jesus  talking  about? 

If  somebody  should  tell  me  of  a  very 
unreasonable  remark  which  my  friend 
Jones  made  the  other  day  in  his  presence, 
that  would  be  the  first  thing  I  should  want 
to  know.  I  should  want  to  know  what 
Jones  was  talking  about.  If  that  did  not 
settle  the  matter  I  should  want  to  know 
what  mood  he  was  in.  Or  if  it  should  oc- 
cur to  me  that  Jones  was  especially  apt 
at  metaphors  and  frequently  indulged  in 
them  I  might  ask  whether  he  was  talking 
in  a  plain,  literal  way  or  indulging,  as  he 
so  often  did,  in  figures  of  speech.  I  think 
too  much  of  Jones  to  take  him  literally 
when  I  know  that  such  an  utterance  taken 
literally  would  condemn  him  as  a  very  un- 
reasonable man.  I  have  known  Jones  a 
long  time  and  I  know  he  is  not  an  unrea- 
sonable man. 

Suppose  it  had  been  my  fortune  to 
spend  a  year  with  Jesus  in  Galilee.  And 
suppose  some  time  after  that  wonderful 
experience  a  friend  should  come  to  me  and 
say :  "I  heard  the  Master  utter  a  very  hard 
saying  the  other  day.  He  told  us  that  if 
a  man  should  strike  you  on  one  cheek  you 


The  Spirit  that  Giveth  Life         43 

ought  to  turn  the  other."  What  would 
I  say? 

If  I  were  a  literalist  I  should  say: 

"Are  you  sure  those  were  his  very 
words?  Very  well:  then  I  am  going  to 
do  exactly  as  he  commanded.  The  next 
time  a  man  strikes  me  on  one  cheek  I  am 
going  to  turn  the  other." 

But  not  being  a  literalist  I  should  not 
decide  the  matter  so  quickly.  It  would 
not  be  sufficient  for  me  to  know  that  those 
were  his  very  w^ords.  Those  words  taken 
in  their  literal  sense  don't  sound  like  him. 
I  know  that  if  a  man  should  smite  me  on 
one  cheek  and  I  should  turn  the  other  it 
would  only  add  fuel  to  the  fire.  And  the 
Master,  I  am  sure,  does  not  want  us  to 
add  fuel  to  such  a  fire.  Besides  I  know 
that  if  I  should  turn  the  other  cheek  I 
would  turn  my  back  upon  my  manhood, 
and  I  know  that  that  could  not  please  him. 
Why,  he  came  to  lift  us  to  the  highest 
manhood,  and  I  can  think  of  nothing  that 
would  stir  his  indignation  so  much  as  the 
sight  of  a  man  laying  aside  his  manhood 
and  leaving  only  a  yellow  streak. 

And  so  I  should  have  to  go  further.    I 


44  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

should  have  to  know  what  he  was  talking 
about  and  I  should  have  to  know  the  spirit 
in  which  those  words  were  uttered.  And 
so  I  should  say  to  my  friend: 

"Indeed!  But  he  could  not  have  meant 
it  hterally,  for  the  Master  always  prac- 
ticed what  he  preached;  and  you  know  he 
never  turned  the  other  cheek.  Suppose 
we  apply  his  own  law  of  interpretation." 

And  I  should  insist  upon  knowing  what 
the  Master  was  talking  about. 

Suppose  we  should  insist  upon  it  today. 
What  would  we  learn? 

We  would  learn  that  Jesus  was  talking 
about  that  horrible  law  of  retaliation. 
That  law  was  not  so  horrible  at  the  time 
it  was  made,  but  the  hate  that  blinds  men 
had  gradually  turned  it  into  an  instru- 
ment of  vengeance,  and  Jesus  hated  venge- 
ance. He  hated  the  revengeful  spirit. 
Retaliation  was  a  horribly  brutal  thing 
that  must  be  ruled  out  of  the  hearts  of 
men,  whatever  the  cost.  He  had  come 
into  a  world  of  brothers — the  Father  made 
men  to  be  brothers — and  he  had  found 
those  brothers  demanding  an  eye  for  an 
tye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth.     It  was  hor- 


The  Spirit  that  GIveth  Life         45 

rible.  It  made  his  spirit  boil  every  time 
he  thought  of  it.  It  was  impossible  for 
him  to  speak  of  it  without  indignation. 
"What?"  I  can  hear  him  saying, 
"What?  An  eye  for  an  eye?  And  you 
the  children  of  the  Father?  You  want  an 
eye  for  an  ej^^e?  You  want  to  retaliate 
like  the  heathen?  What  are  you  thinking 
about?  You  want  to  strike  back  just  for 
revenge?  Perish  the  thought!  Why, 
you  are  destroying  yourself  when  you 
strike  back  for  revenge.  Better  endure 
any  insult  rather  than  strike  back  for  re- 
venge. Better  let  your  enemy  spit  on 
you.  Better  turn  the  other  cheek.  Any- 
thing is  better  than  revenge." 

And  that  was  all.  Not  a  word  was  said 
about  whether  there  might  be  circum- 
stances under  which  a  man  or  a  nation 
might  strike  back  or  not.  All  that  he  said 
was  that  a  man  has  no  right  to  strike  back 
for  revenge.  Unquestionably  the  saying 
applies  against  all  wars  for  revenge  and 
all  indulgence  in  the  spirit  of  retaliation  in 
war,  but  it  cannot  be  quoted  against  war 
in  general.  It  has  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  the  question  of  war  in  general. 


46  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

But  did  not  Jesus  say,  "Resist  not 
evil"?  And  isn't  that  sweeping  enough? 
Doesn't  that  include  all  sorts  of  wars  ? 

One  is  tempted  to  reply  that  if  it  in- 
cludes all  sorts  of  wars  we  have  no  right 
to  make  an  exception  in  favor  of  the  fierce 
war  which  our  pacifist  friends  have  been 
waging  with  all  the  forces  at  their  com- 
mand during  the  last  three  years ;  but  that 
would  be  beside  the  point.  Taken  apart 
from  its  surroundings  and  taken  literally 
this  solemn  command  of  Jesus  imquestion- 
ably  teaches  nonresistance.  Taken  liter- 
ally it  means  that  it  is  the  duty  of  Chris- 
tians to  sit  down  and  fold  their  hands  and 
submit  without  protest  of  any  sort  to 
every  evil  thing  that  may  come  upon  them, 
including  burglars,  impostors,  grafters, 
impecunious  friends  seeking  another  loan, 
saloon-keepers  soliciting  our  votes  and 
(incidentally)  our  boys,  merciless  auto- 
mobilists,  tainted  meats,  weeds  in  the  corn, 
mosquitoes,  pirates,  pestilence  and  war. 
Taken  literally  it  means  that  if  we  want 
to  be  true  followers  of  Jesus  we  must  stop 
trying  to  follow  in  his  steps  (for  we  can- 
not follow  him  without  his  own  heroic 


The  Spirit  that  Giveth  Life         47 

spirit)  and  sneak  off  to  some  secluded 
spot  where  there  is  no  fighting  to  do  and 
where  piously  inclined  souls  can  spend 
their  days  in  such  harmless  and  comfort- 
ing diversions  as  singing  Psalms  and  play- 
ing peekaboo  with  the  children.  Taken 
literally  it  means  that  the  ideal  hero  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  not  the  Man  of  Gal- 
ilee, but  that  big,  fat,  blubbering  non-re- 
sister  whom  I  found  that  day  lying  in  the 
street  with  a  little  game  rascal  perched 
upon  his  stomach.  Taken  literally  it 
means  that  we  should  not  try  to  be  like 
the  JNIaster,  for  he  was  the  greatest  re- 
sister  of  evil  the  world  has  ever  seen.  He 
came  into  the  world  to  rescue  men  from 
their  worst  enemies  and  he  fought  to  the 
last.  The  fact  that  he  did  not  use  phys- 
ical force  (I  shall  discuss  that  matter 
further  on)  does  not  alter  the  fact  that 
he  fought.  He  was  just  as  ivulj  a  fighter 
as  Moses,  Joshua,  David,  Washington, 
Lee  or  the  fighting  parsons  of  the  gold- 
fever  days  of  the  far  West.  And  he  used 
force. 

But  it  is  evident  that  we  cannot  take 
that  saying  by  itself.    We  must  ask  what 


48  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

Jesus  was  talking  about.  And  when  we 
have  looked  into  the  matter  we  shall  find 
that  he  was  talking  about  the  very  same 
thing  he  was  discussing  when  he  com- 
manded us  to  turn  the  other  cheek.  He 
was  talking  about  that  abominable  spirit 
of  retaliation,  and  he  was  saying  that  a 
man  has  no  right  to  do  anything — not 
even  to  resist  evil — in  a  spirit  of  revenge. 
A  follower  of  Jesus  has  many  privi- 
leges, but  he  must  be  ready  to  die  rather 
than  retaliate,  just  as  he  must  be  ready  to 
die  rather  than  steal. 


IV 

THE   SPIRIT  BACK   OF  OUR 
DEEDS 

I  HAVE  called  it  the  INIaster's  own 
law  of  interpretation;  but  it  did  not 
originate  with  him:  as  a  matter  of 
fact  it  is  as  old  as  the  hills.  Ages  before 
Jesus  came  the  world  had  become  con- 
scious of  the  existence  of  a  law  of  inter- 
pretation that  was  wholly  unlike  its  own. 
Everybody  who  had  any  spiritual  vision 
at  all  could  see  that  there  was  a  vast  dif- 
ference between  man's  way  of  looking  at 
things  and  God's.  "Man  looketh  on  the 
outward  appearance,  but  Jehovah  looketh 
on  the  heart."  That  had  always  been 
God's  way.  He  had  never  judged  things 
by  the  way  they  looked  on  the  surface :  he 
had  always  gone  straight  down  to  the 
heart  of  things.  And  everybody  could 
see  that  God's  way  was  right.     But  it  is 

49 


50  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

pleasanter  to  the  flesh  to  look  at  the  out- 
side than  to  make  one's  way  down  to  the 
heart  of  things,  and  it  is  human  to  go  on 
doing  the  pleasanter  thing.  Apparently 
it  was  not  until  Jesus  came  and  made  men 
see  the  peril  and  folly  of  judging  accord- 
ing to  the  letter  that  the  world  began  to 
wake  up  to  the  necessity  of  adopting 
God's  plan. 

Perhaps  no  teacher  ever  had  so  clear  a 
vision  of  this  necessity  as  Jesus.  At  any 
rate  he  urged  it  upon  men  with  an  em- 
phasis which  no  teacher  had  ever  used  be- 
fore. And  he  was  as  persistent  as  he  was 
emphatic.  He  was  not  always  talking 
about  it  but  he  was  always  using  it.  He 
not  only  applied  it  to  the  law  of  God:  he 
applied  it  to  his  own  words  as  well.  When 
an  ill-humored  crowd  insisted  upon  plac- 
ing a  literal  interpretation  upon  a  remark 
which  he  had  made  about  giving  them  his 
flesh  to  eat,  he  gave  them  to  understand 
that  they  must  interpret  his  words  not  ac- 
cording to  the  letter,  but  according  to  the 
spirit.  "It  is  the  spirit  that  giveth  life: 
the  flesh  profiteth  nothing:  the  words  that 
I  have  spoken  unto  you  are  spirit,  and  are 


The  Spirit  Back  of  Our  Deeds      51 

life."  And  he  not  only  applied  it  to  his 
words:  he  applied  it  to  his  conduct.  If 
his  followers  chosie  to  judge  him  by  his 
overt  acts,  as  the  Pharisees  did,  they  would 
no  doubt  make  him  out  a  very  bad  man,  as 
the  Pharisees  did.  He  would  be  no  bet- 
ter in  their  sight  than  the  publicans  and 
sinners  with  whom  he  ate. 

And  he  went  still  further.  He  applied 
it  to  all  human  conduct.  Men  cannot  be 
safely  judged  by  their  overt  acts.  The 
moral  value  of  conduct  does  not  lie  in  the 
overt  act,  but  in  the  spirit  which  prompts 
it.  It  is  not  what  a  man  does,  but  the  mo- 
tive behind  the  deed,  that  counts.  A  man 
may  obey  the  letter  of  the  law  as  rigidly  as 
the  Pharisees  and  be  as  rotten  as  the  Phar- 
isees. A  man  may  be  as  fair  as  a  sepul- 
chre in  his  outward  conduct  and  as  foul  as 
a  sepulchre  in  his  heart.  You  cannot 
judge  a  man  by  what  he  does  with  his 
hands  without  first  taking  a  good  look  at 
his  heart.  A  Christian  has  no  more  right 
to  judge  men's  deeds  by  the  way  they  look 
on  the  surface  regardless  of  the  spirit  that 
prompts  them  than  he  has  to  judge  the 
words  of  Christ  by  the  way  they  look  on 


52  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

the  surface  regardless  of  the  spirit  that  is 
beneath  them. 

We  cannot  even  judge  men's  wars,  hor- 
rible as  they  are,  by  the  way  they  look  on 
the  surface.  If  we  must  condemn  them 
because  they  are  horrible,  then  we  must 
condemn  some  things  which  Jesus  appar- 
ently approves  and  which  we  cannot  well 
get  along  without. 

Childbirth,  for  instance. 

And  surgical  operations. 

Some  wars,  indeed,  we  remember  as 
childbirths.  The  American  Revolution, 
for  instance.  And  a  few  we  remember  as 
surgical  operations. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  according  to 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  war  is  nothing  more 
than  a  horror.  Often  it  is  a  crime.  In 
most  cases,  perhaps,  it  has  been  a  crime  on 
one  side  or  the  other.  But  I  do  mean  to 
say  that  according  to  this  particular  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  we  have  no  right  to  condemn 
war  by  its  outward  appearance.  We 
have  no  more  right  to  condemn  a  war  be- 
cause it  is  horrible  than  we  have  to  con- 
demn a  surgical  operation  because  it  is 
horrible. 


The  Spirit  Back  of  Our  Deeds      53 

If  I  should  spend  ten  minutes  in  an 
operating  room  and  go  away  without  a 
thought  of  what  was  in  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  the  surgeons  whom  I  saw  at 
work,  I  fancy  I  should  go  direct  to  the 
police  station.  And  I  should  go  boiling 
over  with  righteous  rage.  I  should  re- 
port that  I  had  discovered  an  unspeakably 
horrible  place  inhabited  by  fiends  who 
spend  their  time  cutting  men  and  women 
to  pieces  for  the  sheer  hellish  joy  of  it. 
If  I  could  not  stir  up  the  police  I  should 
hurry  over  to  the  newspaper  offices,  and 
if  I  could  not  stir  up  the  reporters  I  should 
go  out  on  the  streets  and  harangue  the 
people.  And  I  should  not  be  satisfied  un- 
til I  had  raised  a  mob  that  would  not  leave 
one  stone  of  that  hospital  upon  another. 
Fortunately  for  the  public  peace,  as  well 
as  for  my  own  comfort,  I  never  go  to  a 
hospital  without  having  my  heart  suffi- 
ciently stirred  to  enable  me  to  look  be- 
neath the  surface  down  to  the  heart  of 
things,  and  when  I  come  away,  instead  of 
rushing  off  to  the  police  station,  I  usually 
go  softly  to  my  home  devoutly  thanking 
God  for  the  wonderful  compassion  of  the 


54  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

Good  Physician  which  found  its  way  into 
the  hearts  of  men  and  moved  them  to 
build  hospitals. 

If  I  had  stood  in  a  Belgian  fortress  dur- 
ing that  unspeakable  eruption  of  savagery 
three  years  ago  and  my  mind  and  heart, 
for  some  strange  reason,  had  failed  to 
divine  what  was  in  the  minds  and  hearts 
of  the  soldiers  at  the  guns,  I  would  have 
come  away  boiling  with  a  rage  against 
war  that  would  never  have  died  out  so  long 
as  I  had  blood  enough  left  to  boil.  Seeing 
only  grim,  death-dealing  fighters  and 
belching  guns  and  exploding  shells  and 
vomiting  volcanoes  filling  the  air  with  a 
horrible  chaos  of  hot  and  bleeding  human 
flesh,  I  would  have  sworn  in  my  frenzy 
that  I  had  spent  an  eternity  in  hell  and 
that  every  Belgian  I  saw  was  a  demon. 
But  if  I  had  stood  in  the  midst  of  that  hor- 
ror with  my  spiritual  eyes  open  and  had 
looked  straight  through  it  all  down  to  the 
heart  of  things,  down  to  the  spirit  that  is 
back  of  things,  I  should  have  come  away 
feeling  that  I  had — 

Well,  I  should  not  have  felt  that  I  had 
been  in  hell.     'Not  should  I  have  felt  like 


The  Spirit  Back  of  Our  Deeds      55 

calling  those  grim,  death-dealing  fighters 
demons. 

A  spiritual  age  judges  things  by  the 
spirit  that  is  back  of  them,  and  this  habit 
increases  its  spiritual  vision  and  its  spirit- 
ual wealth.  A  materialistic  age  keeps  its 
eyes  fixed  upon  externals  and  as  a  conse- 
quence steadily  loses  in  spiritual  vision 
and  wealth.  The  ancient  habit  of  looking 
upon  the  outward  appearance,  which  we 
have  fallen  into  anew  in  the  last  genera- 
tion, is  destroying  our  spiritual  wealth  in 
ways  we  never  dreamed  of.  We  have  lost 
the  spiritual  vision  that  can  look  beyond 
the  freezing  cold  of  winter,  beyond  the 
merciless  March  winds  that  stir  the  trees  to 
their  roots,  beyond  the  boiling  hot  days  of 
summer  all  the  way  to  the  golden  autmiin 
harvests.  Therefore  we  cry  out  against  the 
cold  and  the  wind  and  the  heat.  We  have 
lost  the  the  vision  to  see  beyond  the  hor- 
rors of  the  dissecting  room  to  the  rosy 
cheek  of  health.  Therefore  we  cry  out 
against  the  dissecting  room.  We  have  lost 
the  vision  to  see  beyond  the  parental  rod 
to  the  strong,  noble  man  who  never  for- 
gets to  thank  God  for  the  thrashings  his 


56  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

father  gave  him  when  he  was  a  boy. 
Therefore  we  cry  out  against  the  parental 
rod.  We  can  only  see  as  far  as  the  rod: 
we  cannot  even  see  through  the  father's 
eyes  down  into  his  breaking  heart.  We 
can  only  see  enough  to  assure  us  that  a 
big,  cowardly  bully  is  jumping  on  a  poor 
little,  defenseless  boy.  And  because  we 
cannot  see  farther,  because  we  have  not 
even  the  spiritual  vision  to  see  that  the 
father  who  is  whipping  his  boy  is  cruci- 
fying himself  for  his  boy's  sake,  we  break 
our  rods  and  throw  them  away  and  leave 
our  boys  to  go  to  the  dogs  and  incidentally 
to  break  our  hearts  and  throw  them  away. 
A  father  looks  up  from  his  work  to  see 
his  child  playing  on  the  track  just  as  the 
fast  express  comes  thundering  round  the 
bend.  He  reaches  the  little  fellow  just 
ahead  of  the  locomotive  and,  springing 
across  the  track,  thrusts  him  on  before 
him.  The  child  is  thro^vn  against  the  curb 
and  his  arm  is  broken;  and  a  passing 
stranger,  with  the  spiritual  vision  of  a 
mummy,  proceeds  to  honor  the  father's 
heroic  deed  by  denouncing  him  to  the 
gathering  crowd  as  an  unfeeling  brute. 


The  Spirit  Back  of  Our  Deeds      57 

An  age  with  such  a  vision  may  see 
through  some  things,  but  it  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  see  through  the  smoke  of  battle 
to  such  ethereal  visions  beyond  as  the  tri- 
umph of  right,  the  overthrow  of  tyranny, 
the  rescue  of  the  oppressed,  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  inviolabihty  of  small  nations, 
the  safety  of  democracy,  the  restoration 
of  Belgium,  or  a  victory  for  the  principles 
of  Christ  that  will  secure  to  every  man  the 
right  of  manhood  and  a  fair  chance  to 
achieve  his  divine  destiny  in  the  kingdom 
of  God. 


y 


THE   THING  THAT  COUNTS 
WITH  GOD 

DOWN  in  a  little  Carolina  town 
many  years  ago  they  were  try- 
ing a  man  for  murder.  At  the 
outset  the  judge  had  reminded  the  jury 
of  the  law  which  required  them  to  keep 
together  until  they  announced  their  ver- 
dict, and  then,  after  the  custom  of  the 
time,  proceeded  to  lay  it  upon  their  con- 
sciences. Whatever  happened — no  mat- 
ter if  the  heavens  fell — they  must  keep  to- 
gether. If  one  of  them  should  go  to  the 
bad  place  the  rest  were  in  duty  bound  to 
follow.  They  must  keep  together.  The 
trial  proceeded  quietly  until  suddenly  the 
fire  bell  rang  out.  It  had  been  a  long  time 
since  the  oldest  inhabitant  had  heard  a  fire 
alarm  and  the  excitement  became  so  in- 
tense that  a  juryman  who  was  sitting  by 
a  window  lost  his  head  and — so  the  story 
goes — ^jumped  to  the  ground  two  stories 

68 


The  Thing  that  Counts  with  God    59 

below.  Instantly  the  next  man  sprang 
after  him  and  the  next  and  the  next,  mitil 
eleven  men  had  solemnly  followed  him  at 
the  risk  of  their  lives  in  unquestioning 
obedience  to  the  letter  of  the  law. 

Not  all  Pharisees  have  the  courage  of 
their  convictions,  but  they  all  have  the 
same  convictions.  If  those  Carolina  jury- 
men had  lived  in  Christ's  day  I  fancy  the 
rabbis  would  have  crowned  them  (meta- 
phorically, of  course)  with  laurel  wreaths 
and  exalted  them  to  the  very  highest  seats 
at  Abraham's  table  which  they  had  not  al- 
ready reserved  for  themselves.  A  Phar- 
isee is  a  religious  man  who  has  lost  his 
spiritual  vision  and  who,  being  oblivious 
of  the  spirit  that  is  in  things  and  behind 
things,  is  unconscious  of  any  material  dif- 
ference between  the  ten  commandments 
and  the  multiplication  table. 

When  Christ  came  he  found  the  Phar- 
isees dealing  with  men's  deeds  as  a  mod- 
ern accountant  deals  with  figures.  Twice 
two  means  what  it  says  on  the  surface,  and 
Thou  shalt  not  kill  meant  what  it  said 
on  the  surface.  All  law  was  purely  arbi- 
trary.     Things    were    right    or    wrong 


60  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

simply  because  God  had  commanded  or 
forbidden  them,  or  because  the  rabbis  of 
the  past  had  commanded  or  forbidden 
them,  which  to  their  minds  was  practically 
the  same  thing.  And  as  arbitrariness  al- 
ways begets  arbitrariness  the  business  of 
arbitrarily  dividing  deeds  between  the 
"Do"  and  "Don't"  column  went  merrily 
on  through  the  centuries  without  break. 
People  wanted  to  know  whether  it  was 
right  or  wrong  to  carry  a  needle  around 
on  the  Sabbath,  and  when  the  Pharisees 
decided  to  put  it  down  in  the  "Don't" 
column  it  became  wrong.  Whether  a  man 
carried  a  needle  to  show  his  contempt  for 
the  law  against  burden-bearing  on  the 
Sabbath  or  only  took  it  over  to  a  neigh- 
bor's to  sew  up  a  little  fellow  who  had 
been  gored  by  an  ox  was  not  material; 
having  been  put  down  in  the  "Don't" 
column  it  was  wrong  and  that  was  the  end 
of  it. 

The  Pharisees,  like  the  poor,  we  have 
always  with  us.  A  generation  ago  they 
were  spending  their  time  arbitrarily  desig- 
nating certain  amusements  as  right  and 
certain  amusements  as  wrong.     We  re- 


The  Thing  that  Counts  with  God     61 

member  them  as  gentlemen  of  honor  and 
intelhgence  who  were  open  to  conviction 
provided  it  was  undersood  that  the  devil's 
favorite  habitation  is  a  woman's  feet  and 
that  there  is  no  material  difference  be- 
tween the  girl  who  dances  in  private  with 
her  brother  and  the  girl  who  dances  in 
public  with  a  rake.  For  several  years  past 
they  have  been  busy  laying  down  arbi- 
trary laws  on  the  subject  of  fighting.  We 
may  fight  to  protect  our  individual  prop- 
erty from  a  burglar,  but  we  may  not  fight 
to  protect  the  collective  property  of  the 
American  people  from  a  pirate.  We  may 
put  an  end  to  a  murderer  by  the  slow  pro- 
cess of  life  imprisonment,  but  not  by  the 
instantaneous  process  of  electrocution. 
As  individuals  we  may  protect  our  lives 
with  a  gun,  but  as  a  people  we  must  be 
content  to  protect  our  lives  with  a  protest. 
We  may  fight  our  enemies  with  our 
tongues,  but  not  with  our  fists.  We  may 
use  moral  force  but  not  physical  force. 
And  so  on. 

If  the  Pharisees  of  Christ's  day  were 
right,  then  unquestionably  the  Pharisees 
of  our  own  day  are  right.    And  unques- 


62  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

tionably  it  is  our  duty  to  follow  them. 
Unquestionably  we  should  decide  all  these 
questions  about  fighting  according  to  the 
way  things  look  on  the  surface  and  to  our 
own  eyes,  regardless  of  the  condition  of 
our  vision  and  regardless  of  the  spirit  that 
is  in  things  or  back  of  them.  If  all  fight- 
ing— individual  or  collective,  physical,  in- 
tellectual or  moral — looks  ugly  to  our  eyes 
and  makes  us  feel  bad  inside,  we  must  set 
down  all  fighting  as  wrong  and  then  sit 
down  and  let  the  mosquitoes  eat  us  up, 
while  fiends  insult  our  wives  and  grind 
their  heels  in  our  children's  faces.  If  all 
our  manly  instincts  revolt  at  the  spectacle 
of  a  bloody  fist  fight,  but  jump  for  joy  at 
a  war  of  words,  then  we  should  condemn 
bloody  fist  fighting  and  magnify  the  noble 
art  of  stabbing  your  neighbor  in  the  back 
with  a  poisoned  tongue. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  Pharisees 
of  Christ's  day  were  wrong  it  would  seem 
to  follow  that  the  Pharisees  of  our  day  are 
wrong.  If  we  must  judge  a  fight  not  by 
the  way  it  looks  on  the  surface,  but  by  the 
spirit  that  prompts  it,  it  would  seem,  at 
least  to  the  ordinary  mind,  that  we  have 


The  Thing  that  Counts  with  God     63 

no  more  right  to  arbitrarily  put  this  or 
that  kind  of  fight  in  the  "Do"  or  "Don't" 
column  than  we  have  a  right  to  arbitrarily 
decide  that  two  plus  two  equals  five. 

And  deep  down  in  our  hearts  we  know 
that  the  Pharisees  are  wrong.  If  we  are 
fighting  we  know  perfectly  well  whether 
we  are  right  or  wrong,  and  we  know  it 
not  by  what  is  going  on  on  the  surface  but 
by  what  is  going  on  in  our  hearts.  We 
know  that  the  thing  that  counts  with  God 
is  not  what  our  fists  are  doing,  but  what 
our  hearts  are  doing.  If  I  were  fighting 
to  deliver  a  poor  fellow  from  the  hands 
of  a  cruel  oppressor  I  would  have  a  sense 
of  exaltation  as  strong  and  pure  as  that 
which  comes  at  the  moment  of  supreme 
sacrifice;  but  if  I  should  suddenly  dis- 
cover that  I  was  not  really  concerned 
about  the  poor  fellow  at  all,  but  had 
jumped  on  the  oppressor  because  he  was 
my  enemy  and  I  wanted  to  get  even  with 
him,  my  spirit  would  fall  into  the  bottom- 
less pit  of  degradation  and  shame. 

It  is  not  fighting  that  counts  against 
\is;  it  is  the  hating  that  is  back  of  most 
of  our  fighting.    To  say  that  all  fighting 


64  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

is  wrong  because  it  is  impossible  to  fight 
without  hate  is  not  only  puerile,  but  it 
gives  the  lie  to  every  noble  character  that 
has  ever  lived.  History  does  not  record, 
so  far  as  I  can  recall,  a  single  noble  life 
that  was  not  filled  with  fighting.  I  am 
sorry  for  the  man  who  says  he  cannot 
fight  without  hate,  just  as  I  am  sorry  for 
the  man  who  cannot  punish  a  child  until 
he  gets  "mad."  Any  brute  can  whip  his 
child  when  he  is  mad:  it  takes  a  real  man 
to  whip  his  child  when  he  is  not  beside 
himself.  And  it  takes  a  real  man  to  fight 
when  there  is  not  a  trace  of  hate  in  his 
heart.  A  real  man  cannot  fight  without 
fire,  but  he  can  fight  without  hate.  He 
must  burn  with  wrath — wrath  against 
wrong — but  that  is  a  different  matter;  a 
very  different  matter.    .    .    . 

The  fact  that  many  noble  men  have 
gone  through  life  without  the  use  of  phys- 
ical force  proves  nothing.  They  did  not 
get  through  without  fighting.  And  fight- 
ing, whether  by  physical,  intellectual  or 
moral  force,  is  fighting.  If  Christ's  law  of 
interpretation    is    right    the    distinction 


The  Thing  that  Counts  with  God     65 


'to 


which  the  pacifist  makes  between  physical 
force  and  other  kinds  of  force  is  purely- 
arbitrary.  We  have  been  treated  to  an 
immense  amount  of  drivel  on  this  point 
in  recent  years.  Men  who  plunged  into 
this  fight  against  war  with  tongues  as 
sharp  as  swords,  and  who  have  been  slash- 
ing right  and  left  with  unseemly  ferocity 
ever  since,  tell  us  that  physical  force  is 
an  unspeakably  low  and  vile  thing.  Per- 
haps. I  have  known  men — zealous  apos- 
tles in  what  they  honestly  believed  to  be  a 
noble  cause — to  use  their  physical  tongues 
in  ways  that  were  unspeakably  low  and 
vile.  But  if  fighting  is  to  be  judged,  not 
by  looking  on  the  outward  appearance, 
but  by  looking  on  the  heart,  the  character 
of  the  force  used  is  merely  incidental. 
It  makes  no  difference  whether  I  fight  a 
man  or  his  principles  or  his  nation  with 
physical  force  or  intellectual  force  or 
moral  force:  the  right  or  wrong  of  it  is 
determined  not  by  the  form  of  the  force 
used,  but  by  the  spirit  that  is  behind  it. 
I  might  remark  in  passing  that  it  is  a  little 
difficult  to  reconcile  this  recent  talk  ab-^u^ 
the    savagery    and    vileness    of    physical 


66  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

force  with  the  evident  sincerity  with  which 
the  average  American  used  to  thank  God 
for  the  sound  thrashings  his  good  Chris- 
tian father  gave  him  when  he  was  a  boy, 
and  but  for  which  he  might  not  have  been 
worth  the  rope  it  would  take  to  hang  him. 
For  my  own  part  I  cannot  find  it  in  my 
heart  to  sneer  at  the  only  force  available 
to  the  average  man  who  is  called  to  over- 
come brutality  in  an  emergency.  I  can- 
not despise  the  power  that  God  has  given 
us  to  rescue  women  and  children  from  the 
assaults  of  human  fiends. 

Physical  force  is  an  inferior  force,  but 
not  in  itself  a  vile  force.  It  is  the  force 
in  common  use  among  vile  men  (who 
have  nothing  else  to  use),  and  it  is  often, 
very  often,  used  in  vile  ways ;  but  it  is  not 
a  vile  force.  The  fact  that  Jesus  never 
used  it  proves  nothing  except  that  he 
never  needed  it.  The  fact  that  men  who 
have  reached  the  full  stature  of  moral 
manhood  rarely  use  it  proves  nothing  ex- 
cept that  they  rarely  need  it.  Jesus  had 
no  use  for  it  for  the  simple  reason  that 
he  had  higher  forces.  He  had  great  in- 
tellectual force,  which  in  many  cases  was 


The  Thing  that  Counts  with  God     67 

fully  adequate  for  his  needs;  and  he  had 
a  spiritual  force  with  which  he  held  back 
the  human  Avolves  that  were  ever  at  liis 
heels, — a  force  which  could  sweep  the 
temple  of  its  horde  of  greedy  hypocrites 
with  a  word  and  hurl  a  howling  mob  back- 
ward to  the  ground  with  a  glance. 

If  it  is  hard  to  conceive  of  Jesus  using 
physical  force,  it  is  not  because  physical 
force  is  vile,  but  because  we  can  hardly 
conceive  of  circumstances  in  which  his 
higher  powers  would  not  have  been  avail- 
able. Let  a  man  of  great  moral  stature 
speak  to  a  bully  who  is  choking  a  small 
boy  to  death,  and  ten  to  one  the  bully  will 
scramble  to  his  feet  and  sneak  away  like 
a  humiliated  cur.  The  average  man  does 
not  find  the  problem  so  simple.  Ten  to 
one  he  will  be  compelled  to  jump  on  the 
bully  and  beat  him  into  his  senses.  That 
does  not  mean  that  it  is  wrong  to  beat  bul- 
lies into  their  senses.  But  it  does  mean 
that  the  average  man  has  fallen  pitifully 
short  of  his  divine  calling, 


VI 

BRINGING  THE  QUESTION 
CLOSER  HOME 

IF  a  man  shoots  at  his  neighbor  with 
murderous  intent  and  misses  him, 
he  is  just  as  much  a  murderer  as  the 
man  who  shoots  at  his  neighbor  with  mur- 
derous intent  and  kills  him.  That  is  the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  and  it  is  the  teaching  of 
conscience  and  common  sense.  For  ob- 
vious reasons  society  cannot  undertake  to 
punish  the  man  who  misses  as  a  murderer 
and  it  therefore  makes  a  distinction;  but 
this  distinction  is  purely  arbitrary.  To  say 
that  a  man  is  not  guilty  unless  he  suc- 
ceeds in  killing  his  neighbor  is  to  make  his 
innocence  or  guilt  depend  upon  the  ac- 
curacy of  his  aim  or  the  condition  of  his 
cartridge.  Jesus  made  it  depend  upon 
the  condition  of  his  heart. 

If  the  Master  is  right — -if  it  is  true  that 
the  moral  value  of  our  conduct  is  to  be 
found,  not  in  our  overt  acts,  but  in  the 

68 


The  Question  Closer  Home         69 

spirit  which  prompts  them — then  it  is 
high  time  we  were  tearing  up  our  ar- 
bitrary hsts  of  deeds  that  are  right  and 
deeds  that  are  wrong  and  going  back  to 
conscience  and  common  sense,  both  of 
which  find  their  fullest  expression  in  the 
words  of  Jesus. 

In  the  light  of  this  teaching  of  Jesus  we 
shall  find  that  there  are  no  deeds  which 
we  can  put  down  as  good  under  all  cir- 
cumstances and  very  few  which  we  can 
put  down  as  evil  under  all  circumstar'^es. 
Even  the  best  of  deeds — even  praying, 
even  giving  to  the  poor — may  be  evil.  No 
teacher  ever  placed  more  emphasis  upon 
prayer  than  Jesus.  He  was  always  urg- 
ing men  to  pray.  He  himself  spent  whole 
nights  in  prayer.  Yet  his  spirit  revolted 
at  the  sight  of  the  praying  of  the  hypocrit- 
ical Pharisees  in  the  streets.  There  are  a 
few  deeds  which  we  can  put  down  as  evil 
without  looldng  beneath  the  surface,  be- 
cause we  know  that  they  can  only  proceed 
from  an  evil  spirit ;  but  most  deeds  cannot 
be  intelligently  labeled  until  we  have 
plumbed  them  to  the  very  bottom.  We 
must  know  whence  they  spring. 


70  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

And  in  this  light  we  can  see  how  absurd 
it  is  to  insist  that  it  is  right  to  use  in- 
tellectual force  or  moral  force,  but  wrong 
to  use  physical  force.  That  again  makes 
the  right  or  \vrong  of  our  deeds  depend 
upon  Avhat  we  may  have  in  our  hands 
rather  than  upon  what  we  may  have  in 
our  hearts.  I  grant  that  it  is  quite  un- 
refined to  strike  a  man  with  your  fist,  but 
it  is  hardly  as  cruel  as  most  of  the  gentle 
substitutes  which  our  pacifist  friends  have 
he*^n  so  freely  using  upon  unoffending 
American  audiences  in  the  last  three 
years.  Personally  I  should  esteem  it  a 
favor  to  be  knocked  down  by  half  a  dozen 
fists  if  I  might  thereby  escape  being  run 
through  by  a  brilliant  antagonist  who  has 
had  exceptional  training  in  the  use  of  a 
stiletto  tongue. 

So  with  those  subtle  distinctions  which 
not  a  few  brilliant  academics  have  been 
making  between  fighting  in  self-defense 
or  for  the  rescue  of  one's  cliild  from  a 
kidnapper,  on  the  one  hand,  and  fighting 
for  one's  country  or  for  the  deliverance  of 
an  oppressed  people  from  the  hands  of 
their  oppressors  on  the  other.     No  doubt 


The  Question  Closer  Home         71 

if  we  will  shut  our  eyes  to  the  spirit  which 
prompts  our  deeds  these  distinctions  may- 
be recognized  with  little  trouble,  but  if 
we  will  look  at  them  in  the  light  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  we  shall  see  that  there 
is  no  essential  difference  between  them. 
In  the  light  of  this  teacliing,  that  it  all 
depends  upon  the  spirit  that  is  behind  the 
deed,  we  do  not  need  to  be  told  that  there 
are  times  when  it  is  ignoble  to  fight, 
whether  the  weapons  in  our  hands  are 
moral,  intellectual  or  physical,  and  that 
there  are  times  v»'hen  it  is  a  high  and  noble 
privilege  to  fight  and  to  fight  with  the  best 
weapons  we  can  command,  whether  they 
are  moral  forces,  arguments,  withering 
denunciations,  fists,  or  even  guns.  Sitting 
in  my  quiet  study  far  away  from  the 
hearts  of  men  who  are  struggling  in  bat- 
tle "somewhere  in  France,"  it  might  be 
possible  for  me  to  read  the  story  of  their 
latest  drive  without  seeing  in  it  anything 
more  than  a  horrible  carnival  of  crime. 
But  if  as  I  turned  from  the  storj^  I  should 
be  startled  by  a  cry  for  help,  and  should 
rush  to  the  door  just  in  time  to  see  a 
mother  spring  like  a  tigress  at  the  throat 


72  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

of  a  big  brute  who  was  making  off  ^vith 
her  child,  I  would  be  conscious  of  an  over- 
whelmingly sublime  and  noble  spectacle. 
My  spiritual  vision  may  not  reach  as  far 
as  "somewhere  in  France,"  and  I  may  miss 
the  spirit  of  the  noble  fellows  there  at 
the  front ;  but  so  long  as  it  can  reach  as  far 
as  my  next-door  neighbor  I  shall  not  de- 
spair. It  might  be  worse.  I  might  rage 
against  the  heroism  of  France  until  the 
sight  of  a  mother  next  door  fighting  like 
a  tigress  to  rescue  her  child  would  mean 
nothing  more  to  me  than  a  very  disagree- 
able and  wholly  uncalled-for  exhibition  of 
unrefinement. 

Putting  these  two  pictures  side  by  side 
and  viewing  them  simply  as  isolated  spec- 
tacles I  can  see  little  difference  between 
them.  The  sight  of  men  in  battle  is  hardly 
more  horrible  in  itself  than  the  sight  of  a 
mother  springing  upon  a  brute  like  a  ti- 
gress. Yet  the  very  thought  of  a  mother 
fighting  savagely  for  her  offspring  gives 
us  a  sense  of  exaltation  as  if  we  had  been 
seeing  heavenly  visions.  Everybody  can 
feel  the  thrill  of  it.  Everybody  will  say 
that  it  is  a  high  and  holy  thing.    Yet  we 


The  Question  Closer  Home         73 

all  have  friends  who  never  think  upon  that 
awful  spectacle  in  France  with  any  feeling 
other  than  annoyance.  Why  this  differ- 
ence? Who  that  has  ever  caught  a  glimpse 
of  a  man  as  he  sprang,  under  the  impulse 
of  unselfish  devotion,  to  the  defense  of 
his  country  or  the  rescue  of  an  oppressed 
people,  does  not  know  that  the  spectacle 
of  the  mother  fighting  like  a  tigress  for 
her  child  is  repeated  in  spirit  "somewhere 
in  France"  a  thousand  times  a  day! 

Still  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  the 
Master  thinks  of  this  whole  horrible  busi- 
ness in  Europe  as  refined  men  and  women 
think  of  a  fight  between  two  brutal  boxers 
in  the  back  room  of  a  slum  saloon. 

I  do  not  mean  to  exalt  war.  Heaven 
forbid!  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  as  it 
is  usually  conducted  it  is  not  often  a  carni- 
val of  crime.  It  is  often  a  carnival  of 
crime.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  it  is 
practicable  for  a  war  to  go  on  without  an 
enormous  amount  of  wrongdoing.  Peace 
does  not  go  on  without  an  enormous 
amount  of  wrongdoing.  All  that  I  am 
trying  to  say  is  that  under  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  we  have  no  more  right  to  put 


74  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

down  war  as  a  sin  in  itself  regardless  of  the 
spirit  that  prompts  men  to  engage  in  it 
than  we  have  to  put  down  all  lighting — 
individual  or  collective,  moral,  intellectual 
or  physical — as  a  sin,  regardless  of  the 
spirit  that  prompts  men  to  engage  in  it. 
If  we  make  war  in  general  a  sin  in  itself 
then  the  use  of  any  kind  of  force  against 
our  fellow  men  under  any  circumstances 
is  wrong,  and  we  are  forced  to  take  our 
place  by  the  side  of  the  world's  most 
pathetic  joke,  the  pious  Brahmin  who  is 
afraid  to  crush  a  mosquito  lest  he  should 
incidentally  murder  his  own  grandfather. 
Let  us  bring  the  question  closer  home. 
"Somewhere  in  France"  is  so  far  away. 
Let  us  think  of  Jones.  My  friend  Jones 
— let  us  say — lives  just  half  a  mile  out  of 
town  at  the  back  of  a  thick  pine  forest. 
There  is  a  mill  a  mile  farther  on  that  is 
infested  with  lawless  characters.  Jones 
is  called  away  suddenly  in  the  morning 
and  as  the  afternoon  wears  away  it  is 
noticed  at  the  mill  that  he  has  not  passed 
on  his  way  back.  Night  comes  on  and 
suddenly  the  news  flashes  over  my  neigh- 
borhood that  a  gang  from  the  mill  is  on 


The  Question  Closer  Home         75 

the  way  to  Jones's  house.  There  are  three 
pretty  children  asleep  at  Jones's  house 
and  a  pretty  young  wife  waiting  and  wish- 
ing for  Jones.  1  have  just  gotten  the 
news  over  the  'phone.  The  gang  has 
stopped  in  the  woods  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
away — evidently  waiting  for  the  moon  to 
go  down. 

What  shall  we  do?  My  neighbor  at  the 
'phone  did  not  discuss  the  matter.  He 
simply  said,  "Come  on,  we  are  going." 
He  did  not  say  what  they  were  going  for 
or  whether  they  were  going  to  carry  any- 
thing or  not.  And  I  did  not  ask  him. 
I  simply 

But  what  would  you  do?  We  are 
Christians  in  our  neighborhood — every 
one  of  us.  Fairly  decent  Christians  too. 
Not  one  of  us  ever  hurt  a  man  in  his  life. 
Most  of  us  would  not  even  enjoy  killing 
a  fly.  And  as  fairly  decent  Christians  we 
have  our  names  at  stake.  And  a  Christian 
ought  not  to  be  out  at  night  looking  for 
trouble.  After  all,  what  is  it  to  us?  The 
world  would  be  better  off  if  everybody 
would  mind  his  own  business.  But  there 
is  Jones's  pretty  wife  and  there  are  the 


76  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

babies.  And  before  midnight  those  brutes 
from  the  mill  will  break  down  the  door 
and  poor  Jones's  pretty  wife 

But  here  is  my  gun.  How  strange! 
I  didn't  know  I  had  it.  I  must  have 
picked  it  up  a  moment  ago.  Heavens! 
What  am  I  going  to  do  with  this  gun? 
I — why,  I  am  a  Christian.  1  had  better 
put  it  up  in  the  corner  and  go  to  bed.  The 
God  who  cares  for  the  ravens  when  they 
cry  will  surely  keep  an  eye  on  Jones's 
pretty  wife  and  babies. 

But  this  strange  feeling  in  my  heart! 
Perhaps  this  means  that  God  already  has 
his  eye  on  the  situation  and  that  he  is 
calling  me.    Perhaps  I  had  better  go. 

But  the  gun !  "What  would  Jesus  think 
if  he  saw  me  hurrying  down  the  street 
with  a  gun!  Here  we  are  declaring  war 
against  that  gang  and  actually  going 
after  them.  And  we  are  all  Christians.  Is 
it  right  to  declare  war  except  in  self- 
defense?  That  gang  has  never  done  any 
of  us  any  harm.  What  had  we  better  do? 
We  might  leave  our  guns  and  go  and 
meet  those  fellows  and  announce  our 
strict  neutrality.    Or  we  might  take  them 


The  Question  Closer  Home         77 

along  so  that  we  shall  be  prepared  to  en- 
force our  neutrality  when  we  have  de- 
clared it. 

But  there  is  Jones's  pretty  wife  again. 
I  imagine  I  can  see  her  face  pressed 
against  the  window  pane  looking  for 
Jones.  And  I  can  see  those  three  pretty 
babies  asleep  in  bed.  Oh,  this  fighting 
question!  What  should  a  Christian  do? 
Here,  surely,  is  no  chance  to  turn  the 
other  cheek. 

We  are  almost  in  sight  of  Jones's  house. 
Nobody  said  anything  about  bringing 
guns,  but  every  man  has  a  gun.  Nobody 
has  asked  what  we  should  do.  Wilkins, 
who  takes  the  lead,  has  divided  up  the 
men  and  told  them  which  were  to  ap- 
proach the  house  from  the  front  and  which 
from  the  rear  and  so  on.  And  the  rest  of 
us  are  not  saying  a  word.  Here  we  are — 
Christians  all  of  us — followers  of  the 
Prince  of  Peace — and  somehow  we  have 
blundered  into  this  war  and  now  we  are 
actually  marching  into  battle.  Heaven 
help  us!  This  is  awful!  Who  said  that 
war  is  hell?  And  we  are  Christians. 
Hadn't  we  better  go  back? 


78  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

Listen!  Heavens!  They  are  already 
there.  They  are  breaking  down  the  door. 
Lord,  help  us!  Wasn't  that  Jones's  wife 
crying  for  help?  Quick!  To  the  right 
there!  Take  that  -path,  yonder!  For  the 
love  of  God — quick!    Fire! 

Heavens !  The  brute  has  caught  her  in 
his  arms.  Shoot  through  that  window! 
Quick !    For  the  love  of  God — quick ! 

It  is  all  over.  There  is  blood  on  the 
bed.  There  is  blood  on  our  hands.  There 
is  blood  everywhere.  There  are  three 
men  lying  dead  on  the  floor.  Horror  of 
horrors !    And  we  are  Christians ! 

Yes,  we  are  Christians!  And  we  have 
done  our  duty.  We  have  laid  pretty 
Jones's  wife  upon  her  bed,  for  she  has 
fainted,  and  all  ten  of  us  are  trying  to 
hold  those  three  children  in  our  arms  at 
one  time.  And  there  is  not  a  trace  of  hate 
or  vengeance  in  our  hearts.  "Praise  the 
Lord,"  says  Wilkins,  who  is  a  Methodist. 
"I  feel  like  singing  the  doxology,"  whis- 
pers Watson  devoutly.  "Thank  the 
Lord,  we  didn't  get  here  too  lale!"  ex- 
claims Smithwick.     "Amen!"  say  we  all. 


VII 

WHAT  WAS  CHRIST'S  IDEA 
OF  INDIVIDUAL  RESPONSI- 
BILITY? 

THE  professional  pacifist  who  ar- 
rives on  the  scene  half  an  hour 
after  the  fight  is  over  will  see 
nothing  but  the  horror  of  it  all,  and  natur- 
ally will  reason  accordingly.  Knowing 
nothing  of  what  has  passed  in  our  hearts 
he  will  call  us  murderers.  He  will  call  us 
beasts.  We  flatter  ourselves  that  we  are 
Christians:  he  will  affirm  with  fervency 
that  we  have  not  been  civilized,  much  less 
Christianized.  He  will  declaim  eloquently 
upon  the  sacredness  of  human  life — hav- 
ing in  mind,  of  course,  the  lives  of  the 
dead  men  on  the  floor  and  not  the  lives 
of  Jones's  pretty  wife  and  babies.  He 
will  talk  bitterly  of  those  inexplicable 
modern  lapses  of  humanity  into  savagery. 
He  will  remind  us  that  we  have  not  only 
committed  a  horrible  crime  but  have  done 

79 


80  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

worse:  we  have  committed  an  unspeak- 
ably foohsh  blunder.  "Why  don't  men 
listen  to  reason?"  he  will  ask.  We  shall 
suggest  that  if  we  had  been  listening  to 
reason  we  might  not  have  heard  Jones's 
pretty  wife's  cry;  and  he  will  reply  that 
it  is  all  nonsense;  that  it  was  none  of  our 
business  anyway;  that  if  we  had  been  lis- 
tening to  reason  we  would  have  seen  the 
utter  folly  of  ten  men  of  average  economic 
value  to  the  community  risking  their  lives 
for  one  non-productive  woman  and  three 
helpless  children  Avho  are  eating  their 
heads  off.  Suppose  those  poor  unfortu- 
nates had  killed  the  last  one  of  us  and  left 
our  wives  and  half  a  hundred  children  to 
starve  to  death!  He  will  lift  his  eyes  to- 
ward heaven  and  wonder  when  humanity 
will  ever  learn  to  listen  to  reason.  He 
will  remind  us  that  we  have  not  only 
sinned  against  society:  we  have  sinned 
against  reason.  If  we  protest  and  remind 
him  of  our  obligation  to  humanity  he  will 
laugh  a  hard,  cold,  professorial  laugh 
and  suggest  that  we  are  pretty  fellows  to 
be  talking  about  obligation  to  humanity. 
WHiat  about  our  obligation  to  those  poor 


Christ's  Idea  of  Responsibility      81 

fellows  lying  there  on  the  floor?  What 
about  our  obligation  to  tkeii'  wives  and 
children?  There  was  no  obligation  upon 
us  to  bring  us  here.  That  was  a  matter 
for  the  law.  We  should  have  stayed  at 
home  and  attended  to  our  own  business. 
Such  matters  are  in  the  hands  of  the  law, 
and  if  the  law  doesn't  attend  to  its  duty 
that  is  not  our  lookout.  He  will  ask  us 
what  the  law  is  for  anyway,  and  he  will 
remind  us  that  when  we  put  the  law  in 
operation  to  protect  Mrs.  Jones  and  her 
children  we  did  our  part.  Mind  you,  he 
doesn't  say  Jones's  pretty  wife  and  babies : 
he  doesn't  loiow  our  neighbor  Jones's 
pretty  wife  and  babies.  "Didn't  you  vote 
last  November?"  he  will  ask.  "And 
didn't  you  pay  your  taxes?  Didn't  you 
provide  officers  of  the  law  and  put  the 
law  in  motion?  Then  you  did  your  part. 
Why  did  you  butt  in  here  w^here  you  had 
no  business?  Oh,  this  meddlesome  gen- 
eration! Wlien  will  we  learn  to  mind 
our  own  business  and  let  other  people's 
alone?"    .    .    . 

Ever  since  the  days  of  Cain  the  human 


82  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

race  has  been  trying  to  escape  individual 
responsibility.  It  is  human  to  meddle 
with  other  people's  business,  and  it  is  just 
as  human  to  deny  all  responsibility  for 
other  people's  business.  Every  genera- 
tion pries  into  its  neighbor's  affairs  until 
it  is  asked  to  lend  a  hand  and  then  turns 
round  and  asks  with  a  sneer,  "Am  I  my 
brother's  keeper?" 

It  is  amazing  how  much  inventive  genius 
men  in  all  ages  have  shown  in  their  ef- 
forts to  escape  responsibility  for  their 
neighbors.  The  ancients  sought  escape 
through  religion.  Perhaps  more  religions 
have  been  invented  for  this  purpose  than 
for  any  other  purpose  in  the  world. 
Nearly  all  heathen  religions  seem  to  be 
at  bottom  the  result  of  an  effort  to  quiet, 
or  buy  off,  or  neutralize,  or  in  some  way 
get  rid  of  the  natural  sense  of  obligation 
toward  one's  fellows  which  now  and  then 
seems  to  bob  up  even  in  the  darkest 
corners  of  humanity.  Our  gifted  friends 
in  the  East,  the  Japanese,  succeeded  in 
inventing  a  religion  which  enabled  them 
to  escape  practically  all  individual  obli- 
gation except  their  obligation  to  the  em- 


Christ's  Idea  of  Responsibility      83 

peror  and  his  country.  This  is  the  one 
serious  obstacle  in  the  way  of  Japan's 
advancement  outside  of  material  lines. 
It  has  yet  to  develop  a  sense  of  individual 
obligation,  without  which  no  nation  can 
reach  a  really  high  and  lasting  civilization. 
In  ancient  times  the  sense  of  individual 
obligation  had  little  chance  outside  of  the 
Hebrew  nation.  The  pagans  threw  their 
wet-blanket  religions  over  it  and  usually 
succeeded  in  hushing  its  feeble  cry.  Only 
among  the  Jews  was  any  real  effort  made 
to  nurture  and  develop  it.  Every  heaven- 
sent Hebrew  prophet  laid  the  burden  of 
responsibility  squarely  upon  the  shoul- 
ders of  individual  men.  Every  Hebrew 
proi)het  was  a  standing  protest  against 
the  "slacker."  When  Jesus  came  he  came 
with  an  individual  message  to  individuals. 
Others  might  talk  of  national  responsi- 
bility, but  Jesus  talked  to  Peter  not  about 
national  responsibility,  but  about  Peter's 
responsibihty.  And  when  he  was  through 
Peter  understood  that  he  was  responsible 
not  only  for  himself  but,  as  far  as  his 
ability  lay,  for  everybody  he  could  help. 
Men  were  the  children  of  the  same  Father 


84  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

and  brothers  one  of  another,  and  every 
man  had  to  bear  the  obligation  both  of 
sonship  and  brotherhood.  No  man  could 
be  a  "slacker."  Every  man  vras  a  brother 
to  every  other  man.  Every  man  was  un- 
der obligations  to  be  a  neighbor  to  every 
man  he  could  help.  Not  the  parable  of 
the  Good  Samaritan  alone,  but  the  whole 
teaching  and  life  of  Jesus  emphasized  this 
duty.  Nothing  that  Jesus  ever  did  or 
said  leaves  a  loophole  of  escape.  Men 
have  been  making  loopholes  of  their  own 
ever  since  his  day  and  have  been  escaping 
through  them,  but  they  have  never  gotten 
rid  of  their  obligations  thereby.  They 
are  like  escaped  criminals :  they  can  never 
walk  abroad  as  freemen  until  they  have 
gone  back  and  served  their  sentence. 

Nowadays  men  seldom  try  to  escape  in- 
dividual obligation  through  religion.  We 
have  an  easier  loophole.  We  have  the 
soulless  corporation.  The  idea  of  a  cor- 
poration is  not  new,  and  corporations  in 
the  past  often  acted  in  conscienceless 
ways:  but  it  was  left  for  the  modern  man 
to  conceive  the  idea  of  a  corporation  with- 
out a  soul  and  to  apply  it  to  other  organi- 


Clirist's  Idea  of  Responsibility      85 

zations  besides  those  formally  recognized 
as  corporations.  In  every  sphere  of  life 
today  men  are  seeking  to  escape  individ- 
ual responsibility  by  organizing  and  run- 
ning their  organizations  as  corporations, 
on  the  assumption  that  corporations  are 
not  handicapped  by  a  conscience. 

We  are  running  all  sorts  of  organiza- 
tions on  this  basis — industrial,  political, 
social  and  even  religious.  The  governing 
board  of  a  charity  institution,  composed  of 
benevolent  men  of  unblemished  character 
and  the  highest  business  integrity,  will 
drive  a  bargain  for  supplies  such  as  any 
man  of  character  would  scorn  to  stoop 
to  in  his  own  private  business.  Even 
church  boards  have  been  known  to  fall 
under  the  illusion  that  when  men  are 
working  as  a  board  for  a  good  cause  and 
not  for  self  the  end  justifies  the  means. 
In  every  sphere  today  one  meets  with  the 
feeling  that  the  moment  men  organize 
for  united  action  individual  responsibility 
ends.    .    .    . 

What  does  Jesus  say  about  corpora- 
tions?    Nothing.     Jesus  does  not  recog- 


86  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

nize  a  corporation:  he  only  knows  the 
individuals  that  compose  it.  And  he  has 
told  us  how  we  should  behave  as  individ- 
uals. What  does  he  say  about  the  duties 
of  nations?  Nothing.  Jesus  does  not 
recognize  a  nation — that  is,  as  we  usually 
think  of  a  nation  nowadays.  So  far  as  his 
teachings  go,  a  nation  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  a  brotherhood  of  individuals  liv- 
ing close  enough  together  to  have  interests 
in  common.  There  is  no  reason  why  he 
should  tell  America  how  it  should  behave : 
he  has  told  Americans  how  to  behave  and 
he  is  holding  Americans  responsible,  not 
America.  When  we  came  together  to 
make  ourselves  a  nation  we  did  not  lay 
aside  our  individuality,  and  so  long  as  we 
hold  on  to  our  individuality  our  individual 
obligations  will  hold  on  to  us. 

God  has  not  made  one  moral  law  for 
individuals  and  another  moral  law  for 
corporations,  boards,  legislatures,  nations. 
If  we  are  acting  individually  as  Christians 
it  is  not  our  privilege  to  act  collectively  as 
heathen.  What  God  requires  of  us  as 
individuals  he  requires  of  us  in  every 
capacity.    What  he  requires  of  us  in  our 


Christ's  Idea  of  Responsibility      87 

own  homes  he  requires  of  us  in  the  direct- 
ors' meeting,  in  the  city  council,  in  the 
church  board,  in  the  legislature,  at  the 
polls  and  in  the  trenches.  Wherever  I 
go  I  must  take  my  conscience  and  my  in- 
dividual responsibility.  They  are  as  much 
a  part  of  me  as  my  head. 

In  the  light  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
America  is  simply  a  body  of  Americans. 
The  thing  wliich  many  good  people  nowa- 
days call  the  American  nation  does  not 
exist  outside  of  the  imagination.  It  is 
only  a  fictional  scapegoat  —  a  clumsy 
mental  device  invented  for  the  relief  of 
the  consciences  of  delinquent  Americans. 
And  Jesus  nowhere  recognizes  fictional 
scapegoats.  The  only  American  nation 
actually  existing  is  a  union  of  American 
people,  all  of  whom  without  exception  are 
individually  responsible  for  its  acts  to  the 
extent  of  their  ability  and  opportunity; 
and  there  is  no  way  for  us  to  cut  loose 
from  our  responsibility  as  Americans 
except  by  cutting  loose  from  America. 
Some  people  imagine  that  they  have  suc- 
ceeded in  shifting  their  responsibility  upon 
the  nation;  but  they  have  only  shifted  it 


88  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

from  one  shoulder  to  the  other.  They  are 
still  carrying  the  whole  load. 

It  is  easy  to  say  that  if  I  am  a  member 
of  the  great  American  body  I  am  nothing 
more  than  a  mere  microscopic  gland,  and 
that  therefore  I  cannot  be  expected  to 
have  anything  to  do  with  this  war  question 
one  way  or  another.  One  hardly  looks 
for  a  microscopic  gland  to  step  in  and 
decide  whether  a  nation  should  cast  itself 
in  the  breach  to  save  the  world  from 
tyranny  or  not.  But  that  is  only  an  illu- 
sion. A  microscopic  gland  may  be  a 
very  small  thing,  but  I  should  not  like 
for  many  microscopic  glands  in  my  body 
to  go  on  that  sort  of  strike. 

Aside  from  the  literalism  and  external- 
ism  of  the  rabbis  there  was  nothing  which 
Jesus  protested  against  more  earnestly 
than  this  heathenish  idea  that  one  man 
is  too  small  to  count.  One  sheep  was 
not  too  small  to  count.  One  penny  was  not 
too  small  to  count.  In  the  eyes  of  the 
Father  even  a  sparrow  was  not  too  small 
to  count.  Why  should  a  man  be  too  small 
to  count?  In  the  eyes  of  the  Father 
even  a  piece  of  a  man — even  the  sem- 


Christ's  Idea  of  Responsibility      89 

blance  of  a  man — was  of  more  value  than 
many  sparrows.  There  was  not  a  man  in 
the  world  whom  the  Father  did  not 
count.  There  was  not  a  man  upon  whom 
he  had  not  set  his  heart.  There  was  not  a 
man  for  whom  he  had  not  given  his  Son. 
There  was  not  a  man  to  whom  he  had 
not  given  a  place  in  his  purpose  for  the 
world.  There  was  not  a  man  to  whom  he 
had  not  given  a  task  in  his  plans  to  uplift 
mankind.  In  the  eyes  of  the  Father  the 
most  important  thing  in  the  world  was  a 
man.  Therefore  a  man  was  not  at  liberty 
to  put  himself  out  of  commission.  He 
could  not  isolate  himself.  He  could  not 
live  unto  himself.  He  could  not  be  a 
shirker.  He  could  not  say  that  it  was 
none  of  his  business.  He  could  not  refuse 
to  be  his  brother's  keeper.  He  could  not 
refuse  to  have  a  voice  or  a  hand  in  the 
affairs  of  men.  He  was  not  an  insect; 
he  was  a  man — a  responsible  being  shar- 
ing the  tasks  of  the  Eternal.    .    .    . 

For  nearly  two  thousand  years  it  was 
the  custom  of  Christians  to  magnify  the 
individual  in  accordance  with  the  teach- 


90  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

ings  of  Jesus.  Then  something  happened. 
Science  came  and  put  its  finger  upon 
Things.  Science  did  such  wonderful 
things  with  Things  that  the  world  could 
think  of  nothing  else.  It  was  no  longer 
interested  in  men;  its  heart  went  out  to 
Things.  It  dreamed  of  the  divine  des- 
tiny of  Things.  And  every  day  the  mar- 
ket value  of  the  individual  went  steadily 
down.  Today  in  some  markets  the  only 
man  who  is  quoted  at  all  is  the  machine 
man  or  the  expert  who  has  been  developed 
on  one  side  at  the  expense  of  all  other 
sides.  There  is  a  demand  for  men  in  the 
lump — for  scientifically  organized  socie- 
ties that  can  do  things  as  machinery — but 
the  individual  is  at  a  hopeless  discount. 

It  is  impossible  for  the  market  value  of 
the  individual  to  go  down  without  drag- 
ging down  the  sense  of  individual  obliga- 
tion with  it,  and  in  the  last  generation  we 
have  seen  individual  obhgation  almost 
forced  out  of  the  world's  market.  People 
no  longer  talk  about  the  dignity  of  the  in- 
dividual and  they  don't  wish  to  hear  any 
more,  if  you  please,  of  this  stale  drivel 
about    individual    obligations.      Here    in 


Christ's  Idea  of  Responsibility      91 

America,  or  at  least  in  a  large  part  of 
America,  we  seem  to  have  turned  Romans 
overnight,  for  we  refuse  to  think  of  any- 
thing but  our  cohorts.  We  are  as  am- 
bitious— or  at  least  we  think  we  are — to 
lose  our  individuality  in  our  organizations 
as  the  Hindoo  is  to  lose  his  individuality 
in  Nirvana.  Parting  company  with  the 
Master  and  his  old-fashioned  ideas  of  the 
dignity  and  divine  destiny  of  man,  we 
have  gone  forward  to  magnify  boards,  cor- 
porations, unions,  fraternities,  associa- 
tions, parties,  nations.  In  this  year  of 
grace  the  American  nation,  which  under 
God  owes  its  origin  and  its  all  to  the 
highest  type  of  manhood  the  world  has 
known  since  the  days  of  Paul,  is  devoutly 
thanking  God  for  the  heroes  of  its  past 
and  at  the  same  time  magnifying  soulless 
machines  as  the  only  hope  of  its  future. 

In  the  light  of  science  this  looks  like 
progress,  but  in  the  light  of  the  teachings 
of  Jesus  it  is  only  a  reversion  to  paganism. 

I  can  lose  my  identity  in  a  crowd,  but 
I  cannot  lose  my  individuality  or  my  in- 
dividual obligation.  And  it  makes  no  dif- 
ference whether  the  crowd  is  organized 


92  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

and  incorporated  or  only  a  lawless  mob.  I 
am  as  responsible  for  my  acts  in  a  cor- 
poration or  a  nation  as  I  am  for  my  acts 
in  a  lawless  mob.  If  a  thing  is  wrong  for 
me  as  an  individual  it  is  wrong  for  me  as 
a  citizen  of  my  country.  If  it  is  wrong 
for  me  as  a  citizen  of  my  country  it  is 
wrong  for  my  country,  and  it  is  my  duty 
to  the  extent  of  my  ability  and  opportu- 
nity to  see  that  my  country  does  not  do 
that  which  would  be  wrong  for  its  individ- 
ual citizens  to  do.  If  it  is  wrong  for  me  to 
make  war  against  my  neighbor  for  selfish 
reasons,  it  is  wrong  for  my  country  to 
make  war  against  its  neighbor  for  selfish 
reasons.  If  it  is  wrong  for  me  to  demand 
an  eye  for  an  eye,  it  is  wrong  for  my 
country  to  demand  an  eye  for  an  eye.  If 
getting  into  a  difficulty  with  my  neighbor 
does  not  give  me  a  right  to  retaliate,  the 
fact  that  my  country  is  at  war  with  its 
neighbor  does  not  give  my  country  a  right 
to  retaliate.  If  it  is  right  for  me  to  use 
force  if  necessary  to  deliver  the  oppressed 
from  the  oppressor  it  is  right  for  my  coun- 
try. If  it  is  wrong  for  me  to  use  more 
force  in  such  instances  than  necessary  it  is 


Christ's  Idea  of  Responsibility      93 

wrong  for  my  country.  America  has  no 
more  right  to  stand  indifferently  by  while 
a  tyrannical  government  grinds  its  heel  in 
the  face  of  a  prostrate  nation  than  I  have 
to  stand  indifferently  by  while  a  tyrannical 
neighbor  living  on  my  right  grinds  his 
heel  in  the  face  of  my  helpless  neighbor 
living  on  my  left.  America  has  no  more 
right  to  shut  its  ears  against  a  cry  for 
help  than  I  have.  America  has  no  more 
right  to  show  the  white  feather  than  I 
have.  America  must  be  just  as  human, 
just  as  compassionate,  just  as  unselfish, 
just  as  true  to  God  and  humanity,  just 
as  quick  to  succor  the  oppressed,  just  as 
true  to  every  high  moral  obligation  as  in 
my  best  moments  I  have  tried  to  be  and  as 
in  all  moments  I  know  I  ought  to  be. 


VIII 

CAN  A  CHRISTIAN  BE  A 
"SLACKER"? 

THE  kingdom  of  Christ  is  a  king- 
dom of  peace,  but  you  cannot 
establish  a  kingdom  without 
war.  And  the  army  of  Christ  is  still  on 
the  fighting  line.  The  moment  we  en- 
list in  his  service  we  find  ourselves  face 
to  face  with  forces  of  evil  wliich  call  for  all 
the  fighting  spirit  we  have  and  more.  And 
what  we  lack  he  will  supply.  There  are 
teachings  of  Jesus  which  cannot  get  into 
the  blood  without  turning  the  veriest 
"slacker"  into  a  hero.  If  a  man  is  a 
Christian  he  is  bound  to  fight.  It  is  in 
his  blood.  He  cannot  retreat.  He  can- 
not surrender.  He  cannot  hide  his  head 
in  the  sand.    He  must  fight. 

Christianity  means  war.  It  doesn't 
necessarily  mean  this  or  that  kind  of  a 
war,  but  it  means  war.    We  cannot  follow 

94 


Can  a  Christian  be  a  "Slacker"?     95 

Christ  and  not  fight.  We  must  fight  in- 
dividually and  we  must  fight  as  a  people. 
We  must  fight  with  our  spirits — heaven 
only  knows  how  we  have  to  fight  with 
our  spirits !  We  must  fight  with  our  intel- 
lects. And  so  long  as  savagery  remains 
in  the  world — so  long  as  there  are  human 
beings  who  are  not  susceptible  to  moral 
appeal — it  may  be  necessary  once  in  a 
long  while  to  fight  with  our  bodies.  We 
may  cut  war  out  of  our  hymns  and  our 
rituals  and  our  school  histories  and  our 
ethical  culture  societies,  but  we  cannot 
cut  it  out  of  the  Christian  life.  A  Chris- 
tian is  no  "slacker."  A  Christian  is  every 
inch  a  fighter. 

How  often  a  dear,  white-faced,  saintly 
soul,  who  never  killed  a  fly,  has  confessed 
to  you  that  her  life,  which  always  seemed 
as  serene  as  a  June  sunset,  was  one  long 
fierce  battle  for  Christ  in  the  secret  places 
of  her  home — a  battle  in  which  her  gentle 
lips  and  even  her  blue-veined  hands  often 
had  to  come  to  the  help  of  her  heroic 
spirit ! 

What  are  the  teachings  of  Jesus  that 
force  Christians  to  fight? 


»6  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

He  has  put  them  all  together  for  us  in 
one  word.  That  word  is  love.  Not  sel- 
fish passion,  but  love.  Not  a  narrow,  ex- 
clusive love,  but  an  all-embracing  love. 
Not  love  for  some  men,  but  love  for  all 
men.  Not  love  for  men  alone,  but  love  for 
God  and  men.  Not  any  sort  of  love  for 
God  and  men,  but  filial  love  for  God  and 
brotherly  love  for  men. 

There  is  nothing  that  makes  a  man 
fight  like  love.  If  a  man  reaches  the 
point  where  he  can  love  God  as  his  Father 
and  his  fellow  men  as  his  brothers  he  will 
have  enough  love  to  make  him  fight  as 
long  as  he  lives.  We  have  been  told  that 
if  we  really  love  God  and  our  fellow  men 
we  will  not  fight,  or  at  any  rate  we  will 
not  use  physical  force.  That  is  like  saying 
that  if  I  really  love  my  wife  and  children 
I  will  run  when  they  are  in  danger.  If 
I  love  my  wife  and  children  I  am  bound  to 
fight  for  them  and  I  am  bound  to  fight  as 
hard  as  I  can  and  with  the  best  weapons 
at  my  command,  regardless  of  whether 
they  are  physical  or  not.  The  thing  that 
keeps  some  men  from  fighting  for  their 
wives  and  children  with  the  best  weapons 


Can  a  Christian  be  a  "Slacker"?     97 

at  their  command  is  not  love.  When  a 
man  tells  you  that  he  will  not  fight  for  his 
country  because  he  is  a  planetary  patriot 
and  loves  all  countries,  you  know  that  the 
barrier  in  the  way  is  not  love.  It  is  noth- 
ing but  a  yellow  streak. 

Planetary  patriotism  may  be  defined 
as  a  modern  device  used  as  a  covering  for 
yellow  streaks.  It  is  not  yet  perfected 
and  unless  greatly  stretched  usually  leaves 
both  ends  of  the  streak  exposed. 

If  I  love  God  as  my  Father — the 
Father  whom  Jesus  has  shown  us — I  will 
obey  him  and  I  will  want  to  see  his  will 
done  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in  heaven. 
I  will  fall  in  ^vith  his  purposes  and  plans. 
And  naturally  I  will  come  out  squarely 
against  all  the  forces  that  are  mobilized 
against  him.  I  will  do  everything  I  can 
in  behalf  of  his  will  and  I  will  oppose 
with  all  my  might  every  force  that  is 
seeking  to  defeat  his  will. 

Here,  for  instance,  is  his  plan  for 
rescuing  human  beings  from  the  low  level 
of  sheer  animahsm  and  putting  his  spirit 
into  them  and  helping  them  to  achieve 
their  divine  destiny  as  men — sons  of  God. 


98  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

Jesus  has  told  us  about  this  plan.  He 
has  shown  how  his  heart  is  set  upon  it. 
Here  are  millions  of  human  beings  with 
wonderful  possibilities — beings  made  in 
the  image  of  God  and  designed  to  walk 
with  him  as  liis  sons.  At  present  they  are 
grazing  with  cattle.  And  they  are  slaves 
— like  cattle  tied  to  a  stake.  God  has  a 
plan  to  set  them  free  and  help  them  up 
to  the  high  plateaus  of  the  land  of  the 
spirit  where  they  may  become  men  indeed 
— where  they  may  reach  the  stature  of 
mankind  not  in  body  merely,  or  mind 
merely,  but  in  spirit.  As  a  Christian  it  is 
my  business  to  fall  in  with  tliis  plan. 
Millions  of  peojDle  today  have  no  chance. 
They  are  bound  down  by  sin,  by  igno- 
rance, by  their  fellow  men.  The  bond  of 
sin  God  alone  can  break,  but  he  is  look- 
ing to  us  to  break  the  rest.  If  human 
beings  are  to  be  saved — if  they  are  to  rise 
to  manhood  and  achieve  the  end  of  their 
being — they  must  have  freedom  and  light. 
Their  shackles  must  be  broken  off  so  that 
they  can  go  and  they  must  have  light 
that  they  may  see  which  way  to  go.  They 
must  have  life  also,  but  that  is  God's  mat- 


Can  a  Christian  be  a  "Slacker"?     99 

ter.  Our  business  is  to  give  them  free- 
dom and  hght.  So  long  as  there  is  a  man 
in  the  world  who  has  no  chance  it  is  our 
business  to  fight  for  him  and  to  keep  on 
fighting  until  the  chance  is  given  him. 
We  may  not  have  to  use  physical  force. 
If  we  will  make  the  best  of  our  own  chance 
and  rise  to  the  heights  of  spiritual  man- 
hood we  shall  have  a  superior  force  which 
in  most  cases  will  do  the  work  better  than 
physical  force.  But  whether  we  have  to 
use  ph}  sical  force  or  not  we  have  got  to 
see  that  every  bound  human  being  is  set 
free  and  given  a  chance. 

And  certainly  if  we  love  our  fellow  men 
as  brothers — and  we  shall  love  them  as 
brothers  the  moment  we  come  to  love  God 
as  our  Father — we  are  going  to  fight  ^vith 
all  our  might,  regardless  of  whether  we 
have  to  use  physical  force  or  not.  We  are 
going  to  help  along  everything  that  makes 
for  mankind  and  we  are  going  to  fight 
everything  that  tends  to  destroy  manhood. 
We  will  fight  pacifism  not  only  because  it 
is  contrary  to  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  but 
because  its  whole  tendency  is  to  make  a 
yellow  streak  where  you  want  a  man.  We 


100  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

will  fight  "Safety  first,"  not  merely  be- 
cause it  is  the  password  of  pacifism  and 
the  slogan  of  selfishness,  but  because  its 
whole  tendency  is  to  save  a  man's  skin 
and  let  the  man  go  to  the  devil.  If  men 
are  teaching  half  truths  that  are  honey- 
combing the  nation's  manhood  we  are  go- 
ing to  fight  them,  whether  they  teach  them 
in  the  name  of  religion  or  only  in  the 
name  of  business.  If  a  nation  reaches  the 
point  where  it  is  in  danger  of  being  over- 
whelmed by  materialistic  appeals  and 
where  it  must  either  respond  to  a  higher 
appeal  and  go  to  war  or  else  lose  what 
manhood  it  has,  we  are  going  to  stand  for 
war,  though  we  may  hate  war  a  thousand 
times  worse  than  a  father  hates  to  punish 
his  disobedient  child,  and  though  we  may 
be  unable  to  sleep  of  nights  for  the 
thought  of  its  horrors. 

Heaven  knows  there  is  little  enough 
manhood  in  the  world.  And  the  Father's 
heart  is  set  upon  making  men.  He  gave 
his  Son  as  a  pattern  to  make  them  by  and 
to  give  his  life  that  human  beings  might 
not  perish  but  might  achieve  their  divine 
destiny  as  men.    And  surely  if  the  Son 


Can  a  Ckristian  be  a  "Slacker"?     101 

is  burning  with  indignation  to-day — as 
some  good  people  think — it  is  not  at  the 
sight  of  men  shooting  one  another  in 
Europe,  horrible  as  that  may  be,  but  at  the 
sight  of  men  here  in  America  who  in  their 
amazing  zeal  for  the  gospel  of  selfishness 
have  exalted  the  yellow  streak  as  a  golden 
image  and  are  hysterically  calling  upon 
the  nation's  manhood  to  fall  down  be- 
fore it.  .  .  . 

Much  of  our  hazy  and  foolish  thinking 
about  this  war  question  may  be  traced  to 
the  common  failure  to  realize  that  the  love 
which  Jesus  requires  really  means  some- 
thing in  particular.  It  is  so  easy  to  think 
of  it  as  a  very  charming  but  highly  sub- 
limated sentiment  of  no  earthly  use — 
something  which  the  master  intended  we 
should  carry  in  our  hearts  for  safekeep- 
ing, as  a  woman  carries  a  precious  but 
quite  unuseful  locket  in  her  bosom. 

This  would  be  a  natural  mistake  if 
Jesus  had  only  talked  about  love  and  told 
us  that  all  he  wanted  us  to  do  was  just  to 
love.  But  Jesus  has  never  asked  us  just 
to  love.    He  always  asks  us  to  love  some- 


102  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

thing  in  particular  and  in  a  particular 
way.  He  asks  us  to  love  God  as  a  son 
loves  or  ought  to  love  liis  father.  He  asks 
us  to  love  men  as  a  man  loves  or  ought  to 
love  his  brother.  In  other  words  what  he 
requires  of  the  world  is  a  real  love,  which 
acts  in  the  very  same  way  in  the  world's 
life  as  real  love  in  the  family  acts  as 
family  love.  This  truth  is  not  only  con- 
spicuous in  his  sayings  but  is  even  more 
conspicuous  in  his  life.  Look  through 
the  gospel  story,  and  wherever  you  come 
upon  him  you  will  see  him  either  in  the 
character  of  a  son  whose  heart  is  wrapped 
up  in  his  Father  and  his  Father's  interests 
or  as  a  loving  brother  ready  to  throw  him- 
self into  the  breach  for  his  brother's 
sake.  Now  he  is  helping  forward  his 
Father's  plans;  now  he  is  exalting  his 
Father's  will;  now  he  is  fighting  his 
Father's  enemies — the  Pharisees — almost 
as  fiercely  as  I  would  fight  a  brute  who 
has  his  fingers  at  the  throat  of  my  child; 
now  he  is  throwing  himself  into  the  breach 
for  a  brother;  now  he  is  breaking  the 
chains  of  some  poor  fellow  who  is  bound 
hand  and  foot  by  disease  or  sin ;  now  he  is 


Can  a  Christian  be  a  "Slacker"?    103 

standing  up  for  the  oppressed  against  the 
oppressor.  How  often  he  stands  up  for 
the  oppressed  against  the  oppressor!  He 
even  takes  the  part  of  a  wretched  adul- 
teress against  the  oppression  of  a  lot  of 
church  dignitaries.  He  is  a  brother  to  us 
all,  and  it  is  inconceivable  that  he  should 
stand  silently  by  while  tyrants  grind  their 
heels  in  our  faces.    .    .    . 

No;  Jesus  did  not  use  physical  force. 
But  that  does  not  mean  that  he  regarded 
physical  force  as  a  brutal  thing;  it  only 
means  that  he  regarded  it  as  an  inferior 
thing.  Would  I  choose  to  pounce  upon 
a  mob  of  desecrators  in  the  temple  with 
my  fists  if  I  could  hold  a  little,  harmless 
whip  of  small  cords  aloft  as  a  symbol  of 
authority  to  catch  their  eye  and  then 
speak  a  word  that  would  sweep  the  entire 
mob  headlong  before  me? 

No;  Jesus  did  not  use  phj^sical  force. 
But  it  may  be  worth  while  to  remember 
that  he  used  such  force  as  he  needed.  If 
he  were  here  to-day  I  do  not  imagine  that 
he  would  meet  an  oppressor  who  was  so 
brutalized  that  no  spiritual  weapon  could 


104  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

find  its  way  beneath  his  skin,  but  if  he 
should  meet  such  a  monster  I  am  sure  he 
would  not  throw  up  his  hands.  If  the 
monster  had  his  fingers  at  a  little  child's 
throat  and  he  could  give  him  no  word  or 
look  that  would  overwhelm  him  and  force 
him  to  loosen  his  grip,  I  do  not  imagine 
that  he — he  who  said,  "Suffer  little  chil- 
dren to  come  unto  me" — would  go  on  his 
way  and  leave  the  child  to  be  choked  to 
death. 


IX 

WHAT  WAS  CHRIST'S  IDEA  OF 
THE  VALUE  OF  HUMAN 
LIFE? 

YOU  cannot  stand  in  the  operating 
room  at  a  hospital  and  think 
sanely  on  the  problem  of  human 
suffering  while  your  son  is  on  the  operat- 
ing table.  The  horror  of  it  all  crazes  you. 
So  it  is  with  this  war  question.  The 
pacifist  lecturer  takes  his  place  before 
the  footlights  and  with  a  few  wonderful 
strokes  pictures  for  us  this  horror  of  a 
great  darkness  in  Europe,  and  when  our 
hearts  are  breaking  and  our  brains  have 
turned  to  a  scrapheap  asks  how  any 
human  being  can  vote  for  war.  Of  course 
we  cannot  vote  for  war.  How  can  we 
vote  for  a  wild  and  ravenous  beast  that 
sucks  the  blood  of  men  and  devours  the 
hearts  of  women  and  little  children? 
One  of  the  things  that  runs  us  mad  is 

105 


106  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

the  horrible  loss  of  hfe.  This  has  always 
been  a  terrifying  thing,  but  it  is  more  ter- 
rifying to-day  than  it  ever  was  before. 
The  scientist  will  tell  us  that  this  is  prob- 
ably because  human  life  is  so  much  more 
valuable  to-day  than  it  ever  was  before, 
but  to  our  ordinary  untrained  minds  it 
seems  more  reasonable  to  suppose  that  it 
is  because  this  generation  has  set  a  higher 
price  on  human  life  than  was  ever  set  be- 
fore. The  price  of  human  life  has  been 
steadily  going  up  for  a  hundred  years.  It 
began  to  rise  at  the  ushering  in  of  the  Age 
of  Comfort  and  it  rose  steadily  until  the 
discovery  of  ether,  when  it  took  a  tremen- 
dous jump;  and  it  has  been  jumping  ever 
since.  Since  that  day  we  have  done  more 
to  preserve  our  precious  lives  and  make 
them  comfortable  than  was  done  in  all 
the  generations  that  preceded  it,  and  to- 
day it  is  by  far  the  highest  stock  in  the 
Avorld's  market.  In  ancient  times  it  was 
a  common  saying  that  all  that  a  man  hath 
will  he  give  for  his  life ;  but  to  us  moderns 
that  figure  is  too  modest :  we  are  sure  that 
he  will  give  all  that  he  can  borrow,  beg 
or  steal. 


The  Value  of  Human  Life        107 

And  the  price  is  still  soaring. 

It  would  seem  time  to  ask  whether  this 
human  life  stock  of  ours  is  not  badly- 
watered.  Certainly  we  are  charging 
manj^  times  more  for  it  than  our  fathers 
did  in  the  sixties  and  we  are  not  accus- 
tomed to  speak  lightly  of  the  offerings 
of  those  stressful  times. 

I  asked  an  intelligent  woman  why  our 
young  men  were  not  offering  themselves 
for  their  country,  and  she  answered  sim- 

"^lothers  don't  want  to  lose  their  sons." 
I  remembered  that  the  women  of  my 
town  in  '61  led  their  sons  to  the  door  and, 
holding  back  their  tears,  kissed  them  and 
told  them  to  go.  And  I  fancied  that  the 
life  of  a  son  was  rather  precious  even  in 
those  primitive  days. 

I  asked  a  j'oung  guardsman  on  duty  at 
an  electric  plant  if  he  would  like  to  go  to 
the  front.  I  knew  that  young  militiamen 
used  to  hate  that  kind  of  service  and  were 
always  hoping  to  be  sent  to  the  front.  He 
shook  his  head  and  said  he  would  rather 
stay  where  he  was  for  the  next  six  years. 
I  asked  him  about  his  comrades  and  he  as- 


108  What  Did  Jesus  Teax^h  About  War? 

sured  me  they  were  all  alike.  Nobody 
wanted  to  go. 

It  was  but  a  straw,  but  there  are  vast 
fields  filled  with  such  straws.  And  straws 
still  have  a  way  of  showing  which  way  the 
wind  is  blowing. 

Unless  history  is  a  lie  there  never  was  a 
time  when  men  counted  their  lives  so  dear 
unto  themselves  as  they  do  to-day.  It  was 
not  that  the  young  guardsman  loved  his 
country  less:  it  only  meant  that  he  loved 
his  life  more. 

There  is  a  crumb  of  comfort  in  the  re- 
flection that  we  are  still  heroes  in  our 
childhood.  A  little  fellow  told  me  yester- 
day that  he  dreamed  the  other  night  that 
he  was  trying  to  make  his  way  with  his 
baby  sister  between  the  British  and  Ger- 
man trenches  in  a  battle,  when  he  saw  a 
cannon  ball  coming  straight  toward  her. 

"What  did  you  do?"  I  asked.  He 
laughed.  "Oh,"  he  said,  a  little  sheep- 
ishly, "I  jumped  in  front  of  her,  and  it 
knocked  me  down;  but  I  got  up  and  got 
her  out  all  riffht."    .    .    . 


'»' 


Indifference  to  human  life  has  always 


The  Value  of  Human  Life        109 

been  the  curse  of  the  non-Christian 
world.  Even  the  modern  Japanese  will 
risk  his  life  to  rescue  a  fifty-cent  picture 
of  his  emperor  from  a  burning  building. 
Civilization  never  got  anywhere  except 
on  the  surface  until  the  price  of  human  life 
began  to  rise.  But  in  the  last  hundred 
years  the  pendulum — if  I  may  change  the 
figure — has  swung  to  the  other  extreme. 
Here  in  America  we  moderns  have  put  the 
price  of  life  as  far  above  its  actual  value 
as  the  heathen  ever  put  it  below.  Time 
and  again  in  the  last  two  or  three  years  I 
have  seen  it  raised  above  everything  else 
in  the  world.  I  have  known  women  to 
plead  for  higher  wages  for  shop  girls  so 
that  they  would  not  have  to  sell  their  vir- 
tue in  order  to  live.  "Somewhere  in 
America"  an  audience  of  women  fren- 
ziedly  applauded  a  girl  who  declared  that 
she  would  justify  any  girl  in  selling  her 
virtue  to  provide  bread  for  her  family. 
I  have  seen  the  price  of  life  shamelessly 
raised  above  honor,  above  right,  above 
justice,  above  sacrifice,  above  patriotism, 
above  every  high  and  holy  obligation.  We 
have  used  "Safety  first"  to  smother  out 


110  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

a  high  moral  impulse,  and  the  next  mo- 
ment piously  cursed  our  enemies  for  put- 
ting military  necessity  before  the  obliga- 
tions of  humanity.  Ever  since  the  dis- 
covery of  ether  we  have  been  running 
from  pain  and  heat  and  cold  and  wind 
and  rain,  and  inventing  headache  reme- 
dies, and  making  easy-chairs  easier,  and 
turning  our  homes  into  padded  kiddy- 
coops;  and  the  pampering  and  coddling 
business  has  gone  on  until  we  have  come 
to  feel  that  this  precious  little  spark  in  us 
that  we  call  life  is  of  more  importance  to 
the  world  than  God  himself.  .  .  . 

Undoubtedly  Jesus  set  high  value  upon 
human  life.  All  life,  he  taught,  was 
precious  in  the  eyes  of  God.  Not  a  spar- 
row falleth  to  the  ground  without  our 
Father.  The  preservation  of  our  hves  is 
so  important  to  him  that  we  need  suffer 
no  anxiety  about  them:  vre  only  need  to 
do  our  best  and  leave  the  rest  to  him.  The 
Ufe  is  more  than  meat  and  the  body  than 
raiment.  He  was  concerned  not  only 
about  life  but  about  health:    he  wanted 


The  Value  of  Human  Life        111 

men  to  be  fully  alive  that  they  might  al- 
ways live  at  their  best. 

But  the  value  which  Jesus  set  upon  life 
was  spiritual,  not  material.  He  looked 
at  the  present  life  as  a  high  and  sacred 
opportunitj^  It  was  the  chance  which 
the  Father  gave  to  every  human  being  to 
achieve  the  divine  destiny  of  manhood; 
to  find  his  way  into  the  kingdom  of  God 
and  live  forever;  to  share  in  God's  pur- 
pose for  mankind,  and  to  help  his  fellow 
men  to  achieve  their  divine  destiny  also. 

I  can  find  no  evidence  that  he  valued 
human  life  in  any  other  way.  A  man's 
life  was  valuable  just  in  proportion  to 
the  use  he  was  making  of  it  or  was  going 
to  make  of  it.  If  he  was  not  doing  any- 
thing with  it  at  all  its  value  was  only 
prospective.  If  he  w^as  not  going  to  do 
anything  with  it  at  all  it  was  worth  no 
more  than  a  barren  figtree.  A  cumberer 
of  the  ground  is  only  worth  its  weight  in 
firewood  minus  the  cost  of  cutting  it 
down  and  cutting  it  up. 

But  in  the  eyes  of  Jesus  no  life  was 
anything  like  as  precious  as  the  world  has 
come  to  regard  men's  lives  in  our  day. 


112  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

A  man  might  easily  value  liis  hfe  too 
highly.  The  man  who  thinks  that  his 
Hfe  is  so  valuable  that  he  must  give  up 
everything  else  to  save  it  will  find  at  the 
end  that  he  must  give  up  everything:  he 
has  nothing  left — not  even  life  itself.  "He 
that  findeth  his  life  shall  lose  it."  If  I 
try  to  save  my  life  at  the  cost  of  right, 
justice,  virtue,  truth,  manhood,  the  friend- 
ship of  God,  I  shall  pay  more  for  it  than 
it  is  worth  and  even  then  I  shall  fail  to  get 
it.  A  few  years  of  physical  existence  that 
will  come  to  me  out  of  the  bargain  will 
not  be  life. 

Highly  as  Jesus  valued  life  in  this 
world  as  an  opportunity,  he  did  not  value 
it  at  all  when  placed  in  the  scales  over 
against  any  of  the  things  which  make  for 
life  eternal.  When  it  comes  to  deciding 
between  these  things  and  life  a  true  man 
must  choose  to  die.  At  such  a  time  a 
man  must  lose  his  life  if  he  would  save  it. 

In  other  words  Jesus  looked  at  life  just 
as  every  man  who  has  reached  the  full 
stature  of  spiritual  manhood  looks  at  it 
today.  In  the  eyes  of  every  human  being 
who  has  achieved  spiritual  manhood  the 


The  Value  of  Human  Life        113 

value  of  life  is  relative.  If  you  hold  up 
such  a  man  on  the  road  and  demand  his 
money  or  his  life  he  may  give  you  his 
monej^;  but  if  you  demand  his  life  or  his 
honor,  his  life  or  his  manhood,  his  life  or 
his  allegiance  to  Christ  or  to  truth  or  to 
his  sacred  vows  or  to  humanity  or  to  his 
country,  he  will  hand  over  his  life.  And 
he  will  do  it  not  as  a  suicide  or  a  coward, 
but  as  one  to  whom  God  has  given  his 
own  vision  and  who  can  therefore  see 
things  in  their  true  proportion. 

It  is  plain,  then,  that  when  a  Christian 
is  held  up  and  compelled  to  decide  be- 
tween his  life  and  his  allegiance  to  Christ 
or  to  humanity  or  to  his  country,  he  must 
decide  not  in  the  darkness  of  the  crazing 
horrors  of  war,  but  in  the  light  that  comes 
from  the  face  of  Christ.  So  long  as  Jesus 
could  go  forward  in  his  work  and  pre- 
serve his  life  without  surrendering  or 
compromising  his  honor,  his  manhood,  his 
teachings,  his  allegiance  to  the  Father,  he 
went  on  with  liis  work  and  he  took  care  of 
his  life.  Time  and  again  he  saved  himself 
from  the  mob.  But  when  the  time  came 
that    he    had   to    choose    between    these 


114  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

things  and  his  hfe,  when  his  enemies 
reached  the  point  where  they  could  say- 
that  he  must  either  surrender  or  die,  he 
set  his  face  as  a  flint  and  went  calmly 
forward  to  his  death. 

It  was  in  the  same  spirit  that  his  serv- 
ant Paul  went  forward,  whether  to  life  or 
to  death. 

"Behold  I  go  bound  in  the  spirit  unto 
Jerusalem,  not  knowing  the  things  that 
shall  befall  me  there.  .  .  .  But  I  hold  not 
my  life  of  any  account  as  dear  unto  my- 
self, so  that  I  may  accomplish  my  course." 

The  value  of  life,  I  have  said,  is  rela- 
tive. There  are  times  when  it  is  better 
to  die  than  to  live.  There  are  times  when 
life  is  not  worth  fighting  for.  There  are 
other  times  when  life  is  worth  so  much 
that  we  might  give  our  own  lives  for  it. 
If  my  child  falls  into  the  river  my  valua- 
tion of  his  life  instantly  goes  up,  and  my 
valuation  of  my  own  life  instantly  goes 
down.  If  I  stand  on  the  river  bank  and 
watch  my  own  child  drown  my  own  life 
will  not  be  worth  a  fig. 

Pacifism  run  out  to  its  logical  end  will 
bid  me  stay  on  the  river  bank.     I  am  a 


The  Value  of  Human  Life        115 

poor  swimmer  and  my  life  is  more  pre- 
cious than  the  child's.  Reason  will  bid 
me  stay  also.  How  foolish  to  throw  my 
life  away  and  leave  my  other  children 
starve !  But  if  there  is  a  spark  of  the  life 
of  the  spirit  in  my  heart — if  there  is  a 
trace  of  the  image  of  God  there — I  am 
going  to  plunge  in. 

The  argument  for  the  sacredness  of 
human  life  undoubtedly  condemns  every 
unnecessary  death  in  war,  but  so  long  as 
men  are  called  to  risk  their  lives  for  things 
that  are  more  precious  than  life  it  is  not 
a  condemnation  of  war  in  itself.  Nor  is 
it  a  warning  for  Christians  never  to  have 
any  part  in  any  war  under  any  circum- 
stances. It  only  warns  them  not  to  plunge 
into  war  in  a  spirit  that  is  not  in  harmony 
with  the  Lord  of  Life.  The  thing  that 
makes  one  blush  for  shame  at  the  thought 
of  the  part  that  Christians  have  had  in 
war  is  not  that  they  have  fought,  but  that 
they  have  usually  fought  like  heathen. 


X 


WHAT   WAS   CHRIST'S   IDEA 
OF    PEACE? 

WHAT  is  this  white  dove  our 
hearts  are  longing  for?  Is  it  a 
heaven-born,  hving  thing  ever 
flying  above  our  heads,  but  ever  ready  to 
settle  down  upon  such  as  seek  it  with  up- 
right hearts,  or  is  it  an  expensive  but  quite 
uninspiring  piece  of  taxidermy  that  can 
be  bought  by  anybody  who  has  the  cash 
to  pay  for  it? 

I  wish  this  generation  could  be  per- 
suaded to  sit  down  with  its  Bible  and  do 
a  bit  of  clear,  honest  thinking  on  this 
point.  I  am  sure  we  shall  never  get  the 
tangle  out  of  our  war  question  until  we 
have  gotten  it  out  of  this  peace  question. 

Here  are  these  wonderful  visions  of  the 
old  Hebrew  prophets.  Here  is  a  picture 
of  a  peace  that  flows  like  a  river.  Is  that 
the  kind  of  peace  we  are  looking  for? 

There  is  a  peace  that  flows  like  a  river, 

116 


Christ's  Idea  of  Peace  117 

and  there  is  a  peace  that  stands  still  like 
a  stagnant  millpond  and  smells  to  heaven. 

Here  is  a  vision  of  a  glorious  day  com- 
ing when  "they  shall  sit  every  man  under 
his  vine  and  under  his  figtree,  and  none 
shall  make  them  afraid."  Certainly  this 
looks  very  much  like  the  peace  many  of  us 
are  looking  for  today.  It  is  enough  to 
make  the  mouth  of  Big  Business  water  to 
think  of  a  glad  day  coming  when  every 
man  will  sit  at  his  own  office  desk  and 
work  out  his  own  schemes  and  none — not 
even  the  war  gods  of  Europe,  nor  the 
money  gods  of  Wall  Street,  nor  the  dema- 
gogues of  Congress,  nor  the  autocrats  of 
labor,  nor  those  pesky,  omnipresent  blood- 
hounds of  the  city  editor,  nor  the  gum- 
shoes of  the  Department  of  Justice — shall 
make  him  afraid.  But  is  this  the  vision 
that  Micah  saw?  What  was  it  that 
Micah  saw? 

"But  in  the  latter  days  it  shall  come  to 
pass,  that  the  mountain  of  Jehovah's 
house  shall  be  established  on  the  top  of 
the  mountains,  and  it  shall  be  exalted 
above  the  hills;  and  peoples  shall  flow 
unto  it.    And  many  nations  shall  go  and 


118  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

say,  Come  ye,  and  let  us  go  up  to  the 
mountain  of  Jehovah,  and  to  the  house  of 
the  God  of  Jacob;  and  he  will  teach  of 
his  ways,  and  we  will  walk  in  his  paths 
.  .  .  and  he  will  judge  between  many 
peoples."  * 

Is  that  the  peace  America  is  longing 
for  today?  Is  that  the  peace  the  profes- 
sional pacifist  is  holding  out  to  us — the 
peace  that  comes  to  those  who  sit  at  His 
feet  and  walk  in  his  ways  and  look  to  him 
as  their  judge?  Is  Ajnerica  ready  to  sit 
at  his  feet,  or  is  it  only  looking  for  a 
chance  to  sit  securely  under  its  own  vine 
and  figtree? 

Here  is  another  thrilling  vision  —  a 
vision  of  a  time  coming  when  "the  wolf 
shall  dwell  with  the  lamb,  and  the  leopard 
shall  lie  down  Avith  the  kid;  and  the  calf 
and  the  young  lion  and  the  fatling  to- 
gether: and  a  little  child  shall  lead  them." 
Is  this  the  peace  we  are  looking  for?  No 
doubt  we  should  all  like  to  see  the  time 
come  in  America  when,  as  I  have  said 
elsewhere,!   the   poor   man  could   safely 

*Micah  4:  1-3. 

t  Our  Troublesome  Religious  Questions,  p.  178  {Retell). 


Christ's  Idea  of  Peace  119 

dwell  with  the  money-lender  and  the  little 
manufacturer  could  lie  down  with  the  big 
trust,  and  the  innocent  human  calves 
could  trust  themselves  in  the  hands  of 
their  representatives  in  Congress.  But 
what  must  happen  to  bring  in  that  happy 
day?  Look  at  the  picture  again.  Did 
you  notice  that  the  lion  was  eating  straw 
Hke  the  ox?  Would  a  lion  eat  straw  like 
an  ox  unless  he  had  undergone  a  change 
of  heart?  And  is  that  the  kind  of  peace 
we  want — a  peace  that  will  come  not 
from  a  change  of  our  international  laws 
but  from  a  change  of  heart? 

But  let  us  come  to  the  teachings  of 
Jesus.  Here  is  Jesus  magnifying  peace. 
"Blessed  are  the  peacemakers."  Here  is 
Jesus  sjDcaking  peace — to  the  winds,  to 
the  troubled  sea,  to  the  troubled  hearts  of 
men.  Here  is  Jesus  promising  peace. 
"My  peace  give  I  unto  you."  Is  this 
the  peace  we  are  longing  for?  Is  it  be- 
cause we  are  hungr}''  for  the  peace  which 
Jesus  gives  that  we  are  fighting  war,  or 
is  it  only  because  we  are  hungry  for  that 
outward  quiet,  that  freedom  from  inter- 
ruption and  disturbance  that  enables  us 


120  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

to  pursue  our  own  selfish  material  ends 
in  security  and  with  physical  and  mental 
comfort? 

We  might  as  well  be  honest  with  our- 
selves. The  world  is  hating  war  today, 
not  because  it  is  craving  for  the  peace 
that  Jesus  promised  for  its  eternal  wel- 
fare, but  because  it  is  craving  the  peace 
it  has  promised  itself  for  its  own  present 
material  comfort.  All  the  pious  drivel 
of  the  professional  pacifist  cannot  hide 
this  fact.  We  may  talk  as  fervently  as 
we  please  of  the  love  we  should  have  for 
our  fellow  men,  but  so  long  as  millions  of 
our  fellow  men  are  under  the  heel  of  the 
oppressor  and  have  no  chance  to  achieve 
their  divine  destiny,  the  love  we  should 
have  for  them  will  lead  to  war  rather  than 
peace.  Not  to  hate,  not  to  revenge, 
not  to  greed,  not  to  crime,  not  to 
unnecessary  violence,  but  to  war — to 
the  earnest  use  of  such  force,  whether 
moral,  intellectual  or  physical  as  may 
be  necessary  to  break  the  grip  of  the 
oppressor,  to  hold  back  savagery,  to  lift 
the  oppressed  to  their  feet  and  give  them 
a  chance.     The  thing  that  holds  back  a 


Christ's  Idea  of  Peace  121 

people  from  war  when  matters  have  come 
to  such  a  pass  that  it  cannot  keep  back 
without  losing  its  manhood  and  ignoring 
every  high  moral  obligation,  is  not  love  of 
peace,  nor  love  for  the  God  of  peace,  nor 
love  for  one's  fellow  men,  but  love  of  self. 
We  may  plead  for  peace  in  the  name  of 
Jesus  and  humanity  until  we  have  per- 
suaded ourselves  that  it  is  because  of  our 
love  for  Jesus  and  humanity  that  we  want 
it,  but  the  fact  remains  that  the  peace 
wliich  the  American  people  as  a  people 
have  had  their  hearts  set  upon  for  the  last 
three  years  is  a  peace  that  Jesus  would 
despise  and  a  peace  that  would  work  hu- 
manity's ruin. 

The  only  peace  that  heaven  ever  of- 
fered to  men  either  through  Judaism  or 
Christianity,  either  through  Isaiah  or 
Christ,  is  the  peace  that  flows  from 
righteousness:  not  the  harmony  that 
comes  from  falling  in  with  things  as  they 
are  for  the  sake  of  quiet,  but  the  harmony 
that  comes  from  falling  in  with  the  will 
of  God.  Such  a  peace  comes  to  every 
man  who  is  rescued  from  the  depths  of 
animalism,  where  self  rules,  and  lifted  to 


122  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

the  high  plateaus  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
where  men  can  keep  step  in  perfect  har- 
mony with  God  as  their  Father,  and 
where  they  can  walk  in  j)erfect  harmony 
shoulder  to  shoulder  with  one  and  another 
as  brothers.  That  alone  secures  the  peace 
of  God  which  passeth  understanding. 
The  thing  that  has  been  so  loudly  mag- 
nified in  America  of  late  as  peace — the 
thing  we  get  by  surrender  or  compromise, 
by  sacrificing  our  manhood,  by  consenting 
to  the  rule  of  tyrants,  by  hiding  our  eyes 
to  the  chains  which  bind  our  fellow  men, 
by  ignoring  right  and  justice  and  truth 
and  all  our  highest  obligations  to  God  and 
humanity — that  thing  is  not  peace  at  all. 
It  is  a  monstrous  abortion  born  of  our 
own  selfish  hearts;  a  worthless  imitation; 
at  best  a  cowardly  armistice  which  only 
serves  as  a  breathing  spell  between  wars. 
It  was  that  wretched  make-believe  which 
Jesus  had  in  mind  when  he  declared  that 
the  Son  of  man  came  not  to  send  peace, 
but  a  sword.  .  .  . 

Let  me  see  if  I  can  put  what  I  have 
been  trying  to  say  in  a  picture. 


Christ's  Idea  of  Peace  123 

Jesus  comes  to  our  troubled  hearts  as 
he  came  to  his  disciples  that  dark  stormy 
night  walking  u^jon  the  water — the  thing, 
by  the  way,  which  they  were  most  afraid 
of.  When  we  receive  him  into  our  ship 
the  winds  immediately  cease  and  a  great 
calm  fills  our  hearts.  But  the  next  mo- 
ment we  become  conscious  of  a  situation 
that  must  have  attention.  The  horror  of 
the  storm  is  gone  and  we  have  ceased  to 
tremble  and  a  sweet,  holy  calm  broods 
over  all;     but 

Well,  if  things  were  not  right  in  my 
home  and  the  Master  should  come  to 
spend  awhile  with  me,  something  would 
happen — something  besides  the  passing  of 
storms,  I  am  sure.  I  know  that  if  a 
storm  was  raging  in  my  heart  at  the  time 
it  would  instantly  pass.  All  the  horror  of 
it  would  i^ass  and  in  its  place  would  come 
an  ineffable  peace.  But  that  would  not 
be  all.  The  next  moment  as  I  stood  look- 
ing into  his  face  I  would  think  of  some- 
thing, and  I  would  have  to  ask  him  to  take 
a  seat  and  excuse  me  for  a  little  while. 
And  I  would  hurry  out  and  proceed  to 
set  the  house  to  rights.     I  would  hide  or 


-i 


124  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

burn  everything  I  did  not  want  him  to 
see.  If  anything  was  going  on  in  any 
part  of  the  house  which  I  knew  to  be  con- 
trary to  his  will  I  would  stop  it.  If  I 
could  not  stop  it  with  my  tongue  or  my 
moral  force  I  would  stop  it  with  a  hickory 
switch.  Nothing  should  be  allowed  in  my 
home  that  I  would  be  ashamed  for  him  to 
see.  If  I  had  a  tyrant  for  a  son  and  he 
had  jumped  on  his  younger  brother  and 
bound  him  hand  and  foot  with  a  rope  and 
thrown  him  into  the  cellar,  that  matter 
would  have  to  be  righted  even  if  I  had  to 
wear  out  a  dozen  hickory  switches.  If  I 
had  a  gambling  brother  who  was  at  his 
game  with  a  friend  in  his  room  upstairs 
he  would  have  to  put  up  his  game  or  leave 
the  house.  If  anybody  from  garret  to 
cellar  was  oppressing  anybody  else  he 
would  have  to  stop,  whatever  it  might  cost 
me  to  stop  him.  By  the  time  I  got 
through  I  think  I  would  understand  what 
the  Master  meant  when  he  said  that  he 
came  not  to  send  peace  but  a  sword. 

Setting  things  to  rights  to  harmonize 
with  Jesus  means  war. 

The  Master  did  indeed  come  to  send 


Christ's  Idea  of  Peace  125 

peace,  but  not  the  kind  of  peace  that 
comes  from  acquiescence  in  the  existing 
status  when  the  existing  status  happens  to 
be  wrong.  When  he  stepped  aboard  the 
little  storm-bound  ship  that  dark  night 
the  storm  ceased  in  the  hearts  of  his  disci- 
ples as  well  as  in  the  sea.  Everything  that 
came  from  the  Master  that  night — the 
glance  of  his  eye,  the  sound  of  his  voice — 
was  saying  "Peace"!  But  if  as  he  came 
aboard  he  had  glanced  around  and  found 
Judas  Iscariot  about  to  club  John  over 
the  head,  I  fancy  he  would  not  have  been 
content  to  sit  down  and  acquiesce  in  the 
existing  status  without  a  word.  And  when 
he  spoke  I  fancy  he  would  not  have  said, 
"Anything  for  the  sake  of  peace." 


XI 

WHAT    WOULD    JESUS    SAY 
TODAY? 

IN  the  light  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
it  is  plain  that  we  must  judge  a 
war  not  by  the  evils  which  attend  it 
but  by  the  purpose  and  spirit  which  run 
through  it.  This,  of  course,  is  a  difficult 
task.  Often — usually,  perhaps — it  is  an 
impossible  task.  It  is  easy  under  this  rule 
to  pass  upon  war  in  the  abstract.  We  can 
say  that  when  men  go  to  war  under  the 
compulsion  of  a  high  moral  appeal  or  a 
high  moral  necessity,  remembering  their 
obligations  to  God  as  their  Father  and  to 
all  men  as  their  brothers,  they  are  blame- 
less; and  that  when  they  go  under  the 
promptings  of  selfishness,  greed,  hate,  am- 
bition, pride,  or  any  other  ignoble  impulse, 
the  blood  of  their  brothers  is  upon  them. 
And  it  is  quite  possible  to  conceive  of  cir- 

126 


What  Would  Jesus  Say  Today?     127 

cumstances  in  which  we  might  pass  upon 
war  in  the  concrete.  No  one  who  has  any 
spiritual  vision  at  all  would  have  any  diffi- 
culty in  passing  upon  my  little  fictional 
war  for  the  rescue  of  Jones's  pretty  wife 
and  habies.  In  that  case  there  were  only 
a  few  of  us  and  all  were  of  one  mind  and 
one  heart.  But  such  a  war  is  not  possible 
on  a  large  scale.  Nowhere  in  the  world 
can  you  get  together  a  million  men  in 
whose  hearts  selfishness  has  given  way 
to  a  high  and  holy  purpose.  In  most 
wars  there  is  such  a  mixture  of  motives 
that  it  is  almost  imj^ossible  for  the  wisest 
of  men  to  come  to  any  sort  of  a  verdict. 
A  nation  sometimes  begins  a  war  with 
high  motives  and  ends  it  with  low  motives, 
and  in  such  a  case  there  is  usually  a  vast 
maze  of  varying  motives  lying  between 
which  no  mind  can  untangle.  Even  a 
slight  turn  in  my  little  fictional  war  might 
have  made  it  an  intricate  puzzle.  Sup- 
pose while  we  were  charging  the  gang  at 
Jones's  house  I  had  discovered  that  the 
leader  was  the  brute  who  knocked  me 
down  one  night  in  the  road  and  robbed  me, 
and  suppose  in  that  instant  a  savage  de- 


128  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

sire  for  revenge  had  surged  up  in  my 
bosom  and  I  had  shot  him  down  under 
that  brutal  impulse  instead  of  under  the 
divine  compulsion  of  a  high  moral  neces- 
sity. And  suppose  my  neighbor  Smith 
had  discovered  an  enemy  also  and  had  fol- 
lowed my  example.  Would  we  have  re- 
membered it  as  a  high  and  holy  war,  or 
would  we  have  tried  to  forget  it  as  a 
carnival  of  crime  ?  Or  would  we  have  had 
to  content  ourselves  with  a  Scotch  verdict? 

Good  people  are  asking  what  Jesus 
would  do  if  he  were  among  us  today. 
One  thing  I  am  sure  he  would  not  do. 
He  would  not  indulge  in  wholesale  com- 
mendation on  the  one  hand  or  wholesale 
denunciation  on  the  other.  No  doubt  his 
mind  could  untangle  the  vast  maze  of  mo- 
tives that  run  through  it  all,  but  he  would 
see  too  many  good  motives  to  say  that  it 
was  altogether  bad  and  certainly  he  would 
see  too  many  bad  motives  to  say  that  it 
was  altogether  good.  I  am  not  sure  that 
he  would  undertake  to  pass  upon  the  war 
as  a  whole  at  all. 

But  I  am  sure  he  would  not  remain 
silent.    We  might  conceive  of  him  as  be- 


What  Would  Jesus  Say  Today?    129 

ing  so  overcome  by  grief  and  indignation 
for  a  time  that  he  could  not  speak,  but 
he  would  not  remain  silent.  He  would  not 
decline  to  be  quoted. 

Knowing  him  as  we  do,  I  am  sure  his 
first  impulse  would  be  an  impulse  of  pity. 
His  heart  would  go  out  with  infinite  com- 
passion for  all  who  need  it.  And  that 
would  probably  cover  us  all.  But  it  would 
be  a  sane  compassion.  He  would  not  give 
most  of  his  pity  to  those  who  were  in  the 
wrong  simply  because  they  happened  to 
be  harder  pressed  than  their  enemies. 
There  is  nothing  morbid  in  the  compas- 
sion of  Jesus.  He  would  find  much  to 
weep  over  on  both  sides,  but  I  cannot  con- 
ceive that  his  sympathy  would  find  ex- 
pression in  baskets  of  flowers  for  the  op- 
pressor, or  that  he  would  keep  back  a  part 
of  the  pity  he  had  intended  for  Belgium 
because  the  Belgians  in  their  hour  of  trial 
failed  to  show  a  proper  regard  for  the 
comfort  of  their  invaders. 

And  I  am  sure  that  as  he  gazed  through 
his  tears  there  would  presently  come  up 
from  the  depth  of  his  soul  a  mighty  burst 
of  indignation.    I  can  hear  him  now  say- 


130  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

ing  to  his  followers:  "How  long  shall  I 
be  with  you:  how  long  shall  I  suffer  you?" 
Nearly  two  thousand  years  have  passed 
since  he  charged  his  people  with  the  busi- 
ness of  rescuing  human  beings  from  the 
depths  of  animalism  and  lifting  them  to 
the  heights  of  manhood  in  the  kingdom  of 
God;  and  we  have  hardly  made  a  begin- 
ning. Only  here  and  there  have  we  risen 
to  our  duty  and  broken  off  the  chains  of 
savagery,  ignorance  and  tyranny  with 
which  our  neighbors  were  bound  and 
given  them  a  chance  to  stand  on  their  feet. 
Nearly  two  thousand  years  have  passed 
since  he  charged  us  with  the  business  of 
extending  his  kingdom  throughout  the 
world,  and  although  today  v/e  have  num- 
bers and  strength  sufficient  to  accomplish 
almost  anything  for  him  that  human 
power  can  accomplish,  we  still  lack  the 
courage  to  use  our  power  to  advance  his 
will  in  any  high  place  under  the  sun. 
Worldly  churches  have  used  their  power 
to  advance  their  own  interests,  but  that 
is  another  matter.  Never  in  all  these 
years  have  Christ's  people  united  to  de- 
mand of  the  powers  that  be  that  nations 


What  Would  Jesus  Say  Today?    131 

shall  be  run  in  accordance  with  his  moral 
demands.  Never  have  the  Christian 
forces  of  the  world  mobilized  to  deliver 
the  oppressed,  to  drive  tyranny  out  of 
power,  to  demand  of  the  governments  of 
the  earth  that  every  being  made  in  the 
image  of  God  shall  have  a  chance  to 
achieve  his  divine  destiny. 

I  am  also  sure  that  his  indignation 
would  be  as  a  blasting  wind  upon  the 
spirits  of  all  men  who  have  waged  this 
war  for  selfish  motives  and  especially  upon 
those  who  have  shed  blood  for  such  mo- 
tives in  the  name  of  God  or  under  pre- 
tense of  being  divinely  led.  He  would 
rebuke  these  men  as  terribly  as  he  rebuked 
the  hypocrites  of  old.  And  he  would  not 
stop  with  them.  He  would  turn  to  the 
men  who  have  fought  with  hate  in  their 
hearts,  who  have  struck  back  not  for  the 
right  but  for  revenge,  who  have  used 
measures  of  retaliation  for  vengeance' 
sake;  and  his  flaming  eyes  would  sweep 
them  out  of  his  following  as  desecrators 
of  his  Father's  house. 

What  would  he  say  to  the  men  in  the 
trenches?    For  those  who  are  there  under 


132  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

the  compulsion  of  motives  which  no  man 
would  blush  to  own  at  his  feet,  certainly 
he  would  have  no  word  that  was  not  heart- 
ening or  uplifting.  In  the  light  of  his 
teaching  it  would  not  seem  strange  if  he 
should  counsel  some  men  to  go  home,  but 
they  would  be  men  who  had  denied  their 
manhood,  their  country  and  their  God  by 
taking  up  arms  from  ignoble  motives.  In 
other  words  they  would  be  men  who  had 
not  gone  to  war  at  all,  but  had  only  gone 
into  the  business  of  human  butchery  for 
gain. 

As  he  went  hither  and  thither  reliev- 
ing the  suffering  and  cheering  the  true- 
hearted  there  would  no  doubt  fall  from 
his  lips  many  words  of  commendation, 
but  they  would  not  be  for  good  marks- 
manship or  mere  physical  bravery:  they 
would  be  for  those  who  kept  their  gaze 
upon  the  star  of  sacrifice  and  upon  their 
high  calling  as  children  of  the  Father  and 
brothers  of  men,  and  for  those  who  while 
trembling  in  body  never  failed  to  stand 
steady  and  true  in  spirit.  Also  he  would 
soothe  the  spirit  of  the  dying  Jew  as  well 
as  the  djring  Christian ;  and  if  one  pointed 


What  Would  Jesus  Say  Today?    1S3 

out  to  him  that  the  Jewish  rabbi  who 
snatched  a  crucifix  from  an  Irish  soldier 
and  held  it  up  before  the  eyes  of  a  dying 
Catholic  he  would  say — I  am  sure  that  he 
would  say — "He  that  is  not  against  us  is 
for  us." 

And  I  am  sure  of  one  thing  more.  I 
am  sure  his  spirit  would  burn  with  indig- 
nation at  the  sight  of  men — whether  kings, 
generals  or  common  soldiers — coolly  lay- 
ing aside  moral  obligation  as  a  mere  scrap 
of  paper  on  the  ground  of  military  neces- 
sity. .  .  . 

What  would  he  say  to  America? 

Nothing.  He  does  not  know  America. 
At  least  he  does  not  know  the  convenient 
fiction  which  so  many  of  us  call  by  that 
name  and  which  warms  us  with  a  patriotic 
glow  only  when  we  imagine  that  we  have 
shifted  our  obligations  upon  its  shoulders. 
But  he  would  have  somewhat  to  say  to  us 
Americans. 

Perhaps  he  would  say,  for  one  thing, 
"These  ye  ought  to  have  done,  and  not  to 
have  left  the  other  undone." 

I  do  not  think  he  would  be  severe  upon 


134  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

us  for  not  going  to  our  task  until  the 
eleventh  hour,  for  he  once  told  a  very 
encouraging  story  for  people  who  for  one 
reason  or  another  do  not  go  to  their  task 
until  that  hour.  But  I  think  he  would 
give  us  a  word  of  warning.  He  would 
remind  us  that  we  have  an  opportunity 
to  show  whether  we  are  his  true  followers 
or  only  his  distant  admirers.  He  would 
tell  us  that  if  we  are  going  to  the  front 
under  the  compulsion  of  a  high  moral  ap- 
peal or  a  high  moral  necessity  his  blessing 
will  go  with  us,  but  that  we  had  better 
take  care  to  keep  our  hearts  sacred  to  this 
high  motive  to  the  end.  He  would  tell  us 
that  if  we  have  high  moral  obligations  to 
keep  us  at  home,  still  we  are  brethren  and 
each  of  us  must  do  his  "bit."  We  can  not 
refuse  to  help  the  cause  of  humanity  in 
France  because  we  are  kept  at  home  any 
more  than  we  can  refuse  to  help  extend 
Christ's  kingdom  in  China  because  we  are 
kept  at  home.  And  perhaps  he  would  go 
further.  Perhaps  he  would  tell  us  that 
while  it  is  ignoble  for  a  man  to  forsake  the 
loved  ones  who  are  dependent  upon  him 
and  go  to  the  front  without  compulsion, 


What  Would  Jesus  Say  Today?     135 

under  pretense  of  patriotism,  it  is  equally 
ignoble  for  him  to  stay  at  home  for  the 
sake  of  greed  under  any  pretense  what- 
soever. 


XII 

WHAT     SHOULD    BE     THE 

CHRISTIAN'S   ATTITUDE 

TOWARD    WAR? 

I  AM  glad  that  the  world  has  at  last 
come  to  hate  war.  Not  that  I  think 
it  means  as  much  as  we  are  just  now 
taking  it  to  mean.  Certainly  it  does  not 
mean  that  we  have  come  to  love  peace.  I 
can  see  no  sign  that  the  world  is  getting 
very  hungry  for  real  peace.  It  wants 
freedom  from  disturbance,  but  that  does 
not  necessarily  mean  more  than  it  wants 
to  get  rid  of  things  that  rack  men's  nerves 
and  destroy  their  comfort  and  imperil 
their  lives  and  interfere  with  their  busi- 
ness. It  is  weary  of  noise,  but  I  do  not 
think  it  is  hungry  for  the  quiet  of  the 
fields  in  the  cool  of  the  evening.  It  is 
sick  and  tired  of  interruptions,  but  it  is 
not  longing  for  an  opportunity  to  sit  by 
the  twilight  fire  alone. 

136 


The  Christian  Attitude  Toward  War  137 

Still  it  means  something.  Hating  war 
does  not  insure  peace,  but  it  may  bring 
about  conditions  in  which  it  will  be  easier 
to  awaken  in  men's  hearts  a  yearning  for 
real  peace  and  a  real  willingness  to  fall 
in  with  the  mind  of  the  Prince  of  Peace. 
I  know  there  are  good  people  who  imag- 
ine that  this  rising  hatred  of  war  is  itself 
proof  that  we  have  already  fallen  in  with 
that  mind ;  but  Jesus  was  not  a  mere  hater 
of  war.  A  coward  would  excel  him  as  a 
hater  of  war.  In  the  light  of  his  teachings 
I  cannot  conceive  of  him  as  standing  be- 
fore an  Ajnerican  audience  today  and 
affirming  that  war  is  such  a  horrible  thing 
that  we  must  immediately  banish  it  from 
the  world  regardless  of  conditions  or  con- 
sequences. Jesus  was  never  blind  to  con- 
ditions. Nor  did  he  have  anything  in  his 
spirit  in  common  with  the  academic  hero 
of  our  day  whose  favorite  exhibition  of 
courage  is  a  fine  recklessness  of  conse- 
quences where  other  people  are  concerned. 
You  could  not  get  him  to  think  of  himself, 
but  where  other  people  were  concerned  he 
bad  to  think.  And  he  thought  of  conse- 
quences.   I  am  sure  he  would  not  ask  me 


138  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

to  go  through  a  forest  where  hons  abound 
without  taking  my  gun.  Nor  would  he 
ask  me  to  sho^v  my  love  for  a  lawless 
neighbor  by  intrusting  my  money  to  his 
keeping  or  by  confiding  to  him  that  I  had 
decided  to  give  away  my  pistol  and  sleep 
with  my  windows  open.  Jesus  would  pre- 
fer that  I  defer  my  trip  among  lions  with- 
out a  gun  until  that  happy  day  when  a 
little  child  shall  lead  them,  and  he  would 
not  have  me  relax  my  precaution  against 
my  lawless  neighbor  until  he  had  under- 
gone a  like  change  of  heart. 

But  would  not  Jesus  say  that  war  is  a 
horrible  thing?  Undoubtedly.  But  let  us 
look  into  his  face.  Often  I  see  him  going 
about  in  the  character  of  the  Good  Physi- 
cian. How  would  a  good  and  wise  plwsi- 
cian  probably  think  of  war?  I  can  easily 
imagine  that  if  Jesus  should  come  among 
us  today  he  ^vould  talk  about  war  as  a 
good  and  wise  physician  would  talk  about 
a  horrible  last-resort  operation  that  is  per- 
formed in  rare  cases  at  a  hospital.  War 
at  best,  he  would  say,  is  too  terrible  to 
think  of  except  in  rare  cases  and  then 
only  as  a  last  resort ;  and  if  we  are  driven 


The  Christian  Attitude  Toward  War  139 

to  it  we  must  go  to  our  task  in  the  same 
spirit  that  prompts  a  conscientious  Chris- 
tian surgeon  to  undertake  a  terrible 
operation  as  a  last  resort.  .  .  . 

I  cannot  see  how  one  can  stand  in  the 
light  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus  and  insist 
that  no  sort  of  war  is  ever  necessary  under 
any  circumstances.  So  long  as  it  is  our 
duty  to  cooperate  with  Christ  in  rescuing 
human  beings  from  the  slavery  of  sin, 
ignorance  and  tyranny,  so  long  must  we 
be  at  war  with  sin,  ignorance  and  tyranny ; 
and  so  long  as  this  war  goes  on  we  shall 
be  in  danger  of  being  driven  to  the  use 
of  physical  force.  Among  these  enemies 
are  some  whom  we  can  occasionally  over- 
whelm by  intellectual  force;  others  by 
spiritual  force;  but  there  are  others  who 
are  so  savage  that  nothing  but  a  material 
weapon  can  get  beneath  their  skin;  and 
so  long  as  such  enemies  of  God  and  hu- 
manity remain  in  the  world  all  the  power 
in  the  world  cannot  insure  its  permanent 
freedom  from  physical  war. 

On  the  other  hand  it  is  just  as  true  that 
war  is  only  necessary  in  very  rare  cases. 


140  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

If  I  have  a  violent  next-door  neighbor  it 
is  possible  that  the  time  may  come  when 
it  will  be  necessary  for  the  protection  of 
my  loved  ones  or  my  other  neighbors  to 
give  him  a  sound  thrashing.  But  how 
many  good  and  wise  men  ever  found  it 
necessary  to  give  their  next-door  neighbor 
a  sound  thrashing? 

If  I  were  living  as  Jesus  lived  I  would 
have  such  moral  force  that  I  could  dis- 
arm any  troublesome  neighbor  who  was 
not  altogether  savage  without  the  use 
of  an  ounce  of  physical  force.  And  it  is 
not  often  that  a  man  has  a  savage  for 
a  next-door  neighbor.  Moreover,  if  I 
were  wise  as  well  as  good  it  is  quite  pos- 
sible that  I  could  so  conduct  myself  that 
even  if  I  should  have  a  savage  for  a  neigh- 
bor it  might  not  be  necessary  to  give  him 
a  sound  thrashing  once  in  a  lifetime. 

So,  if  we  Americans  had  been  doing 
our  duty  as  Christians  for  the  last  hundred 
years,  if  we  had  devoted  half  as  much  time 
to  our  moral  and  spiritual  development 
as  we  have  devoted  to  our  material  devel- 
opment, if  we  had  developed  half  as  much 
moral  power  as  material  power,  it  is  quite 


The  Christian  Attitude  Toward  War  141 

probable  that  we  would  have  enough 
moral  power  today  to  force  good  behavior 
upon  any  troublesome  nation  that  was  not 
altogether  savage  without  firing  a  gun  or 
even  calling  for  volunteers.  Moreover  if 
we  were  wise  as  well  as  good  it  is  quite 
possible  that  we  could  so  conduct  our- 
selves that  even  if  we  should  have  a  sav- 
age nation  for  a  neighbor  it  might  not  be 
necessary  to  give  it  a  sound  thrashing 
once  in  its  lifetime. 

But  all  this  only  reduces  the  chances  of 
war  to  a  minimum.  It  does  not  get  rid  of 
the  minimum.  And  it  is  not  the  part  of 
wisdom  to  ignore  what  we  cannot  get  rid 
of.  We  have  got  to  take  this  minimum 
into  account.  We  have  got  to  take  these 
rare  cases  into  account.  Now  and  then, 
so  long  as  savagery  remains  in  the  world, 
all  our  moral  force  and  all  our  wisdom 
may  prove  insufficient,  and  we  may  have 
to  go  to  war  as  a  last  resort. 

The  important  thing  to  remember  just 
here  is  that  while  we  may  be  blameless  if 
we  are  driven  into  war  we  are  not  blame- 
less if  we  drift  into  it.  We  have  no  n;!or'} 
right  to  allow  this  nation  to  drift  into  war 


142  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

than  a  physician  has  to  allow  his  patient 
to  drift  into  an  operating  hospital.  The 
physician  who  neglects  his  patient  until 
an  operation  becomes  necessary  is  a  crim- 
inal, and  where  a  people  neglect  condi- 
tions until  a  war  thereby  becomes  neces- 
sary they  are  criminals.  War  is  so  ter- 
rible a  thing  that  no  people  can  stand  idly 
by  and  see  their  nation  drift  into  it  and  be 
blameless. 

This  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a  very  sore  sub- 
ject for  modern  Christians.  In  ancient 
and  medieval  times  nations  plunged  into 
war.  Nowadays  they  usually  drift  into 
it.  In  primitive  times  our  ancestors  no 
doubt  got  a  lot  of  fun  out  of  squabbhng 
with  their  neighbors.  But  since  the  Good 
Samaritan  has  been  passing  our  way  all 
that  is  changed.  We  really  feel  nowadays 
that  a  quarrel  between  neighbors  is  a  ter- 
rible thing.  Yet  quarrels  between  neigh- 
bors have  not  ceased.  We  still  have  them, 
mainly  because  when  we  lost  the  incentive 
to  fight  our  neighbors  we  fell  into  the 
habit  of  drifting.  It  is  the  absence  of  a 
strong  incentive  that  makes  men  and  na- 
tions drift. 


The  Christian  Attitude  Toward  War  143 

Of  course  we  don't  want  to  go  back  to 
the  old  incentive  either  as  individuals  or  as 
nations.  That  no  doubt  would  stop  our 
perilous  drifting,  but  it  would  take  us  back 
to  our  old  ways.  What  we  need  is  an 
incentive  that  will  stop  our  drifting  and 
take  us  forward  to  better  ways.    .    .    . 

Apparently  the  first  incentive  to  war 
was  the  sheer  fun  of  fighting.  It  is  hard 
to  reahze  that  this  incentive  lasted  until 
the  beginning  of  our  modern  civilization. 
But  it  passed  at  last.  One  still  knows  a 
few  people  who  dearly  love  a  "scrap," 
but  no  nation  now  goes  to  w^ar  for  the 
sheer  fun  of  it. 

The  next  incentive  is  hate.  That  has 
not  yet  passed,  but  it  is  passing.  The 
modern  man  is  not  averse  to  hating  his 
neighbor,  but  he  is  of  a  practical  turn  and 
he  calculates  that  he  can  no  longer  afford 
to  pay  the  price.  Usually  it  takes  some- 
thing more  than  hate  alone  to  plunge  a 
modern  nation  into  war. 

After  hate  came  greed — greed  for  gain 
or  glory  or  both.  This  undoubtedly  is  the 
dominant  incentive  of  our  own  time, 
and  thus  far  it  shows  little  sign  of  passing. 


144  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

Naturally  it  would  be  expected  to  outlive 
hate,  but  just  now  it  is  being  pressed  by 
another  incentive — love.  I  am  not  sure 
that  any  nation  has  ever  waged  war  for 
love  alone — not  even  for  love  of  country; 
but  unquestionably  it  has  been  playing  an 
ever-increasing  part  in  modern  wars.  The 
present  war  may  be  the  most  terrible  war 
the  world  ever  saw ;  but  it  is  not  the  worst. 
It  is  far  from  being  the  worst.  Even 
its  horrifying  savagery  is  not  to  be  com- 
pared with  the  savagery  of  ancient  war- 
fare. We  talk  of  the  rivers  of  blood  that 
are  flowing  through  Europe :  we  lose  sight 
of  the  far  deeper  and  broader  rivers  of 
compassion  that  are  flowing  round  the 
world.  If  there  is  more  hate,  there  is  more 
love.  If  there  is  more  greed,  there  is  more 
liberalitj^  If  there  is  more  selfishness, 
there  is  more  sacrifice.  It  is  not  because 
our  wars  have  been  so  bloody  that  we  feel 
like  hiding  our  faces  for  shame:  it  is  be- 
cause they  have  been  so  horribly  selfish. 
We  cannot  forget  that  while  we  have 
always  been  quick  to  spring  to  our  guns 
at  the  first  sign  of  mobilization  on  the 
border,  we  have  never  found  it  diflicult 


The  Christian  Attitude  Toward  War  145 

to  sit  still  and  smoke  our  cigarettes  in 
peace  while  tyrants  were  grinding  whole 
peoples  to  pulp  beneath  their  heels.  We 
cannot  forget  that  while  we  Christians 
have  jumped  at  every  chance  to  fight  for 
our  own  freedom,  we  have  had  several 
chances  to  wage  righteous  wars  for  the 
oppressed  Jew  and  missed  them  all.  We 
cannot  forget  that  while  Armenia  was 
bleeding  we  only  laid  aside  our  cigarettes 
long  enough  to  adopt  resolutions  of  sym- 
pathy and  pass  around  the  hat. 


XIII 

HOW    FAR    SHOULD    A 
CHRISTIAN    GO? 

IT  is  easy  to  ask  confusing  questions 
about  war.  For  example:  Should 
a  Christian  go  with  his  country  into 
an  unjust  or  unnecessary  war?  But 
questions  of  this  sort  are  not  so  difficult 
as  they  usually  appear.  It  all  depends 
upon  the  point  of  view.  When  we  look 
at  America  out  of  our  own  selfish  hearts 
we  usually  see  nothing  but  a  huge  organi- 
zation quite  apart  from  ourselves  which 
we  are  at  liberty  to  step  into  or  out  of  at 
will.  From  this  point  of  view  it  is  easy 
to  see  that  a  Christian  should  not  follow 
his  country  into  an  unjust  or  unnecessary 
war,  and  for  a  moment  everything  is  clear ; 
but  the  next  moment  it  occurs  to  us  that 
parting  with  one's  country  at  the  forks  of 
the  road  is  not  an  easy  matter;  and  then 
all  is  confusion.  It  is  as  impossible  to 
get  a  clear  vision  of  a  question  of  duty 


How  Far  Should  a  Christian  Go?     147 

as  to  war  from  a  selfish  point  of  view  as 
it  is  to  get  a  clear  vision  of  a  question  of 
duty  about  anything  else  from  a  selfish 
point  of  view. 

But  there  is  another  point  of  view.  In 
the  light  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
America  does  not  appear  as  a  huge  organ- 
ization which  one  is  at  liberty  to  step  into 
or  out  of  at  will.  Clearly  Jesus  had  no 
conception  of  a  nation  as  a  machine  or 
corporation.  I  cannot  conceive  of  him  as 
thinking  of  a  nation  as  anything  more  or 
less  than  a  body  of  individuals  bound  to- 
gether by  the  bonds  of  brotherhood.  I 
have  no  doubt  that  he  would  recognize  the 
right  of  neighbors  to  bind  themselves  to- 
gether with  an  extra  bond — the  bond  that 
ties  a  people  into  the  separate  bundle  we 
call  a  nation.  Certainly  my  obligations 
are  stronger  toward  those  whose  fortunes 
may  be  affected  by  my  conduct — those 
whom  I  have  the  power  to  help  or  hurt — 
than  toward  tLose  who  are  practically  be- 
yond my  reach.  If  all  this  is  true  the 
question  whether  I  should  go  with  my 
country  into  an  unjust  or  unnecessary 
war    resolves    itself    into    the    question 


148  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

whether  I  shall  stand  by  my  brotherhood; 
and  in  the  light  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
such  a  question  answers  itself.  Jesus  does 
not  ask  us  to  endorse  the  conduct  of  our 
brothers,  but  he  does  ask  us  to  stand  by 
them.  It  is  folly  to  say  that  if  I  take 
any  part  in  an  unjust  war  I  thereby  en- 
dorse injustice.  A  loving  mother  will 
stand  by  her  criminal  son  to  the  end,  but 
no  one  thinks  of  saying  that  she  thereby 
endorses  his  crimes. 

If  I  find  that  my  family  is  drifting 
into  an  unjust  fight  I  must  oppose  it  with 
all  the  power  I  can  command;  but  the 
moment  the  fight  begins  the  situation 
changes,  and  my  duty  changes  with  it. 
My  family  is  now  in  peril  and  I  cannot 
forsake  my  loved  ones  in  peril.  Whether 
they  are  in  the  wrong  or  not  is  no  longer 
the  question :  they  are  in  peril  and  I  must 
stand  by  them.  I  cannot  put  on  superior 
airs  and  say  that  I  am  a  member  of  the 
world-family  and  I  cannot  afford  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  petty  neighborhood 
squabbles:  my  family  is  in  peril  and  I 
must  stand  by  my  loved  ones.  I  am  not 
going  to  help  the  enemy.    I  am  not  going 


riow  Far  Should  a  Christian  Go?     149 

simply  to  stand  by  and  see  that  there  is 
fair  play.  I  am  going  to  stand  by  and 
fight :  and  I  am  going  to  fight  for  my  own 
people. 

And  as  a  member  of  the  great  Ameri- 
can family  my  duty  is  just  as  plain.  In 
the  light  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus  it  is 
impossible  for  me  to  conceive  that  it  was 
wrong  for  America  to  enter  the  Great 
War.  Matters  had  come  to  such  a  pass 
that  it  would  have  been  a  crime  to  stay 
out.  To  stay  out  would  have  been  to  vio- 
late our  conscience;  to  shut  our  ears  to  a 
high  moral  appeal;  to  put  our  own  com- 
fort before  every  moral  obligation  just  as 
the  enemy  had  put  military  necessity  be- 
fore every  moral  obligation.  But  if  Amer- 
ica had  been  in  the  wrong,  our  duty  as 
members  of  the  great  American  family 
would  have  been  just  as  plain.  If  my 
country  should  drift  or  blunder  into  an 
unjust  war  it  is  my  duty  as  a  Christian 
to  act  as  a  member  of  the  family.  I  will 
not  fight  for  the  purpose  of  helping  my 
country  in  an  unjust  cause,  but  I  will 
fight  all  the  same.  I  will  fight  to  save  my 
country.     I  will  not  forsake  my  country 


150  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

in  its  hour  of  peril.  I  will  no  more  at- 
tempt to  evade  my  duty  to  my  country 
by  insisting  that  I  am  a  world  patriot  and 
therefore  my  duty  is  to  the  world  as  a 
whole,  than  I  will  attempt  to  evade  my 
duty  to  my  family  by  insisting  that  I  be- 
long to  the  world-family  and  that  there- 
fore my  duty  is  to  the  world-family  as 
a  whole. 

The  man  v>'ho  says  he  is  too  broad  to 
love  his  own  country  better  than  other 
people's  countries  probably  does  not  mean 
that  he  is  too  broad  to  love  his  own  wife 
and  children  better  than  other  i)eople's 
wives  and  children,  but  that  is  what  he 
says.  World-patriotism  has  a  high  and 
virtuous  sound,  but  it  is  only  free-lovism 
run  to  seed.  It  is  simply  an  extreme  way 
of  sajang  that  in  matters  of  love  there  are 
no  boundary  lines  which  one  is  bound  to 
respect. 

But  a  Christian  must  not  only  stand  by 
his  country  in  war.  He  must  stand  by  his 
Master.  He  must  uphold  and  magnify 
his  will.  He  must  insist  that  from  begin- 
ning to  end  everything  that  is  done, 
whether   in   America   or   "somewhere   in 


How  Far  Should  a  Christian  Go?     151 

France,"  shall  be  done  in  harmony  with 
his  teachings. 

We  American  Christians  must  unite  in 
a  mighty  effort  to  fix  the  gaze  of  the  na- 
tion upon  the  highest  star  in  sight  and  to 
hold  it  back  whenever  it  shows  signs  of 
yielding  to  the  impulses  of  selfishness  or 
sheer  animalism. 

We  must  turn  the  minds  of  the  people 
to  God's  great  purpose  for  the  race  and 
to  their  share  in  his  plan  to  rescue  human 
beings  from  every  bond  that  holds  them 
down  and  to  give  them  a  chance  to  achieve 
their  divine  destiny  as  men  in  the  kingdom 
of  God. 

We  must  set  our  faces  as  a  flint  against 
all  greed  and  hate  and  demand  with  all 
the  force  at  our  command  that  no  eye 
shall  be  taken  for  an  eye  or  tooth  for  a 
tooth. 

We  must  remember  and  help  America 
to  remember  that  God  has  made  no  pro- 
vision for  letting  down  the  moral  law  to 
meet  the  exigencies  of  war,  and  that 
whether  martial  law  is  declared  or  not  the/ 
God  of  heaven  and  not  that  monster  idol. 
Military  Necessity,  is  still  God  over  all. 


152  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

We  must  insist  that  America  has  no 
right  to  use  any  severer  force  or  any  more 
force  than  is  necessary  to  meet  the  highest 
moral  ends  in  accordance  with  God's 
plans  for  the  race,  and  that  to  go  a  step 
further  is  to  infringe  u]Don  the  preroga- 
tive of  God  himself.  "Vengeance  belong- 
eth  unto  me:  I  will  recompense,"  saith 
the  Lord. 

We  must  insist  that  as  a  father  must 
not  lay  aside  his  fatherhood  when  he  is 
called  to  punish  his  son,  so  men  must  not 
lay  aside  their  brotherhood  when  they  are 
called  out  to  fight  their  fellow  men.  A 
true  father  does  not  punish  his  son  with 
glee  or  hate,  but  with  a  breaking  heart. 

We  must  guard  the  moral  manhood  of 
the  nation  both  at  home  and  at  tlie  front. 
We  must  place  proper  moral  restraint 
around  our  young  men  in  the  trenches  and 
give  them  every  moral  and  religious  op- 
portunity; and  we  must  stand  ready  to  op- 
pose every  unworthy  proposal  that  may 
threaten  to  compromise  or  in  any  way 
injure  the  manhood  of  the  nation  at  home. 

We  must  keep  our  house  swept  clean 
in  the  sight  of  heaven.    We  must  not  do 


How  Far  Should  a  Christian  Go?     153 

our  sweeping  with  the  bhnds  shut,  as  did 
the  old  woman  who  insisted  that  when  the 
sun  was  shining  in  the  room  it  raised  such 
a  dust. 

We  must  stoutly  resist  the  popular 
notion  that  the  greater  the  amount  of 
bloodshed,  the  better.  We  must  earnestly 
insist  that  bloodless  measures  shall  be  used 
wherever  practicable,  sternly  set  ourselves 
against  all  cruelty  and  do  everything  that 
human  ingenuity  and  human  compassion 
can  suggest  for  the  amelioration  of  all  the 
horrors  of  war,  both  at  the  front  and  at 
home. 

We  must  hearten  the  fighters  at  the 
front,  comfort  the  grief-stricken  at  home, 
use  the  opportunity  which  the  presence  of 
death  gives  us  to  invite  men  to  accept 
eternal  life,  give  ourselves  to  works  of 
relief  and  mercy,  and  cheer  and  inspire 
the  world  by  our  example  of  unselfish  and 
loving  service. 

And  we  must  pray.  Of  course  we  must 
pray.  We  must  pray  for  our  enemies, 
but  not  as  hypocrites.  We  must  pray  for 
ourselves,  but  not  as  greedy  vultures.  We 
must  pray  for  our  country,  not  for  mere 


154  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

success  in  arms  but  for  its  triumph  in  the 
right.  We  must  pray  for  peace,  but  as 
sane  men  and  women,  not  as  enthusiasts, 
remembering  that  our  prayers  will  go  no 
farther  than  our  hearts,  and  that  though 
we  pray  till  doomsday  we  shall  not  re- 
ceive the  gift  of  real  peace  so  long  as  we 
insist  upon  putting  our  own  wills  and 
plans  in  the  way  of  the  wills  and  plans  of 
the  Prince  of  Peace, 


XIV 

THE  BUSINESS  IMMEDIATELY 
BEFORE  US 

WE  had  just  begun  to  dream  that 
the  world  had  gotten  far 
enough  along  to  abolish  war, 
and  we  were  seriously  thinking  of  taking 
our  swords  to  the  smith  to  be  turned  into 
plowshares,  when  the  awful  shock  came 
and  woke  us  up.  After  that  we  did  not 
know  what  to  think,  except  that  our 
dreams  were  premature.  That  is,  until 
the  other  day.  The  other  day  we  suc- 
ceeded in  working  our  way  through  chaos 
to  another  conclusion.  We  decided  that 
after  all  is  said  and  done  we  shall  still 
have  use  for  our  common  sense — the  kind 
of  sense  that  will  not  let  you  throw  away 
your  gun  while  there  are  still  fresh  tracks 
of  wild  beasts  in  the  forest.  Hereafter  it 
will  take  something  more  than  the  golden 

155 


156  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

dreams  of  the  professional  pacifist  to  as- 
sure us  that  there  will  never  be  another 
war,  or  that  it  is  worth  while  to  hope  for 
a  lasting  peace  so  long  as  savagery  and 
tyranny  are  allowed  to  run  loose  in  the 
world. 

I  am  glad  that  the  war  has  done  this 
much  for  us.  I  am  glad  that  we  have 
begun  to  realize  that  before  peace  can 
come  the  savage  and  tyrant  must  go.  I 
am  glad  that  we  are  at  last  convinced  that 
it  is  not  the  part  of  wisdom  to  cover  a 
slumbering  volcano  with  roses  and  then  sit 
down  on  the  roses. 

Surely  this  is  something  to  be  thankful 
for. 

But  it  is  not  enough.  What  we  need 
to  realize  just  now  is  that  it  is  not  the 
part  of  wisdom  to  sit  down  at  all.  We 
cannot  abolish  either  savagery  or  tyranny 
by  ignoring  it  any  more  than  by  covering 
it.  There  must  be  a  change  deep  down  at 
the  heart  of  things. 

A  lustful  brute  attempts  to  violate  the 
sanctity  of  a  home,  and  because  the  en- 
raged husband  has  the  audacity  to  throw 
himself  in  his  way,  jumps  upon  him  and 


The  Immediate  Business  Before  Us  157 

tears  him  to  pieces.  A  pious  ideahst  might 
insist  that  the  only  Christian  way  to  deal 
with  such  violent  eruptions  is  to  bid  the 
monster  go  in  peace  with  the  assurance 
that  his  own  home  shall  be  accounted 
doubly  sacred;  but  to  the  ordinary  mind 
such  a  provision  against  future  outbreaks 
does  not  seem  altogether  adequate. 

When  the  German  war  god,  in  his  fury 
at  the  Belgians  for  daring  to  throw  their 
bodies  in  the  way  of  his  savage  purpose 
to  violate  the  sanctity  of  their  homes, 
sprang  upon  them  and  tore  them  to  pieces, 
there  were  idealists  who  suggested  that 
the  only  Christian  course  to  pursue  was  to 
bid  the  tyrant  to  go  in  peace  with  the 
assurance  that  he  should  suffer  no  harm, 
and  that  the  sanctity  of  his  own  home 
would  be  duly  guarded;  but  somehow — 

But,  as  our  friends  the  enemy  would 
say,  we  have  harped  on  that  string  long 
enough. 

All  the  promises  of  the  pious  idealists 
to  the  contrary  the  world  will  never  be 
safe  from  such  eruptions  until  there  has 
been  a  change  deep  down  at  the  heart  of 
things,  and  we  might  as  well  come  to  the 


158  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

question  that  is  immediately  before  us. 

What  can  we  do  while  waiting  for  this 

^  change  deep  down  at  the  heart  of  things? 

What  can  we  do  as  a  nation? 

As  I  have  said,  in  the  light  of  the  Mas- 
ter's doctrine  of  individual  responsibility 
it  seems  clear  that  he  expects  a  nation  to 
act  exactly  as  the  individuals  who  compose 
it  ought  to  act.  I  should  have  no  difficulty 
in  deciding  what  course  I  should  pursue 
if  I  were  surrounded  by  savage  neighbors. 
So  long  as  savagery  dominated  the  com- 
munity my  doctrine  of  "preparedness" 
would  have  few  limits.  I  would  do  my 
best  to  live  on  friendly  terms  with  all 
men,  but  I  should  neglect  no  means  to 
prepare  myself  for  the  worst.  I  should 
not  refuse  to  fortify  my  home  because, 
forsooth,  my  wife  was  gentle  and  my  chil- 
dren harmless.  At  the  same  time  I  should 
not  stir  up  my  next-door  neighbor's  bad 
blood  by  flaunting  my  pre})aredness  in  his 
face.  I  should  not  imagine  that  I  could 
hasten  the  day  of  peace  and  safety  by 
marching  up  and  down  my  back  yard 
an  hour  every  day  with  my  best  gun  on 
my  shoulder  and  stopping  now  and  then 


The  Immediate  Business  Before  Us   159 

to  point  it  at  my  neighbor's  window.  I 
should  not  make  faces  at  him  or  sneer  at 
his  children  or  dare  him  to  kick  my  dog. 

But  I  should  keep  my  gun  loaded.  I 
should  keep  several  guns  loaded. 

But  the  moment  the  community  began 
to  settle  down  to  civilized  ways  I  should 
begin  to  reduce  my  preparedness.  I  would 
remember  that  preparedness,  even  when  it 
is  not  flaunted  in  the  face  of  the  enemy,  is 
never  soothing,  and  that  if  I  would  en- 
courage peace  I  must  be  willing  to  meet 
it  at  least  half  way.  And  I  should  not 
stop  when  I  had  reduced  my  armament 
one  half.  As  the  community  settled  down 
to  civilized  Avays  I  should  go  on  selling  off 
my  guns  and  munitions,  and  I  should  keep 
on  until  one  day  when  a  mad  dog  came 
around  I  would  discover  that  I  didn't 
even  have  a  superannuated  pistol  in  the 
house. 

Is  that  all  I  would  do?  No.  As  a 
Christian  living  in  a  community  that  was 
gradually  settling  down  to  civilization  I 
should  do  my  best  to  hasten  the  settling 
down  process.  I  should  try  by  neighborly 
ways  to  develop  in  the  community  a  sense 


160  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

of  neighborlmess.  I  should  try  to  get  peo- 
ple into  the  habit  of  thinking  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  brotherhood.  In  a  thousand 
ways  I  should  appeal  to  their  slowly  de- 
veloping sense  of  moral  manhood.  I 
should  not  be  content  to  bring  them  to 
a  gentleman's  agreement  to  live  together 
as  gentlemen:  I  should  try  to  transform 
the  community  into  a  brotherhood — a 
primitive  brotherhood  such  as  that  which 
exists  among  boys  in  every  well-regulated 
community. 

Watch  a  gang  of  fairly  civilized  boys. 
If  a  fellow  gets  out  of  humor  and  becomes 
obstreperous  he  is  at  once  given  to  un- 
derstand that  he  must  "be  good"  or  he 
will  be  put  out  of  the  game.  If  he  re- 
fuses to  be  good  they  not  only  put  him 
out  of  the  game,  but  they  warn  him  that 
if  he  continues  to  give  trouble  he  will  get 
a  sound  thrashing.  And  if  he  continues 
to  give  trouble  they  are  as  good  as  their 
word.  But  they  don't  go  beyond  their 
word.  They  don't  jump  on  his  stomach 
with  their  feet  or  grind  their  heels  into 
his  face.  As  a  rule  they  only  use  such 
force  as  may  be  necessary  to  bring  him 


The  Immediate  Business  Before  Us   161 

to  the  point  where  one  is  ready  to  be 
good. 

Now  a  nation  should  act  in  the  very 
same  way.  If  it  is  the  duty  of  every 
American  who  has  a  savage  neighbor  to 
fortify  himself  to  the  extent  of  his  peril 
and  no  further,  it  is  the  duty  of  Ameriea 
to  fortify  itself  against  such  savage  neigh- 
bors as  it  may  have  to  the  extent  of  its 
peril  and  no  further.  If  it  is  the  duty  of 
every  American  to  try  to  bring  his  neigh- 
bors together  on  a  fraternal  basis,  it  is 
the  duty  of  America  to  try  to  bring  its 
neighbors  together  on  a  like  basis.  If 
our  God-given  sense  of  brotherly  obliga- 
tion demands  that  we  should  unite  even 
in  boyhood  to  force  the  disturbers  of  our 
peace  to  "be  good"  for  the  general  good, 
it  demands  that  nations  (which  are  essen- 
tially brotherhoods )  shall  combine  to  force 
the  disturbers  of  their  peace  to  be  good 
for  the  general  good. 

But  it  is  hardly  worth  while  for  nations 
to  try  to  get  together  on  a  brotherly  basis 
if  the  followers  of  Jesus  are  not  going  to 
fall  in  with  their  Master's  plan  to  get  the 
race  together  on  a  brotherly  basis.    And 


162  What  Did  Jesus  Tesuch  About  War? 

we  are  not  going  to  fall  in  Avith  this  plan 
until  we  have  rid  ourselves  of  some  illu- 
sions. We  must  at  least  get  rid  of  this 
great  American  illusion  which  is  always 
putting  the  cart  before  the  horse  and  as- 
suring us  that  if  we  will  seek  first  the 
peace  of  our  selfish  dreams  "all  these 
things  shall  be  added"  unto  us.  We  think 
that  if  we  can  only  get  the  peace  we  are 
yearning  for,  brotherhood  and  all  the 
other  beautiful  things  of  the  spirit  will 
come  tumbling  down  from  heaven  into  our 
laps.  But  the  peace  we  are  yearning  for 
is  not  the  peace  that  comes  down  from 
heaven.  What  we  really  want  is  not  peace 
at  all,  but,  as  I  have  said,  freedom  from 
disturbance.  We  want  an  uninterrupted 
chance  to  make  money  and  have  a  good 
time.  We  don't  want  to  sit  down  to  our 
cards  at  night  with  the  unpleasant  reflec- 
tion that  the  game  may  be  interrupted  any 
moment  by  a  shrieking  shell  bursting 
through  the  window  and  exploding  at  our 
feet.  We  don't  want  any  disagreeable  ex- 
periences. W^e  don't  want  any  zeppelins, 
submarines,  bloody  bandages,  scare  heads 
in  the  newspapers,  calls  to  the  front,  extra 


The  Immediate  Business  Before  Us  163 

taxes,  nerve-racking  explosions  or  the 
sight  of  detached  heads,  arms  and  legs  fly- 
ing about  in  the  air.  We  don't  want  any 
interruptions  to  Big  Business,  the  exist- 
ing order,  our  party  program,  good  roads 
or  "twin-sixes."  The  only  thing  about 
war  that  pleases  us  is  the  pretty  Red 
Cross  nurse.  We  don't  like  war:  there- 
fore we  pray  for  peace.  But  we  pray  for 
our  kind  of  peace. 

God  has  never  promised  the  world  any 
such  peace.  He  has  never  promised  a 
peace  that  can  be  dropped  down  into  our 
laps.  He  has  never  shown  any  desire  to 
spoil  his  children  by  shielding  them  from 
disagreeable  interruptions  or  by  multiply- 
ing their  chances  for  better  investments 
and  longer  joy  rides.  The  only  peace  he 
has  promised  is  his  own  peace.  And  that 
kind  of  peace  comes  into  our  hearts  and 
not  into  our  laps.  And  it  does  not  come 
in  response  to  our  call  for  a  better  chance 
to  indulge  our  selfish  appetites.  It  comes 
only  when  we  have  left  the  low  depths 
where  selfish  cattle  graze  and  have  risen 
to  the  quiet  heights  of  manhood  in  the 
kingdom  of  God.    When  the  human  race 


164  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

arrives  at  the  heights  of  spiritual  man- 
hood where  men  Hve  and  walk  with  God 
as  their  Father  and  with  one  and  another 
as  brothers,  then  we  shall  have  peace  with- 
in, and  not  until  then  may  we  be  sure  of 
uninterrupted  peace  without. 

When  that  time  comes  outward  peace 
will  be  a  blessing,  not  a  peril.  .  .  . 

I  might  as  well  admit  just  here  that  in 
the  light  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus  I  can 
see  no  sign  of  the  millennial  dawn  in  any 
of  our  plans  for  national  peace,  either 
pacifistic  or  militaristic.  Somebody  has 
quoted  a  wise  mother  as  saying  that  about 
all  we  can  do  for  our  children  is  to  tide 
them  over  until  they  can  learn  some  sense. 
And  that,  it  seems  to  me,  is  all  we  can 
hope  to  do  through  our  national  or  inter- 
national peace  measures.  At  best  we  can 
only  tide  the  world  over  from  day  to  day 
until  it  learns  some  sense ;  in  other  words, 
until  it  reaches  manhood.  The  elaborate 
plans  we  have  made  to  enforce  peace, 
whether  by  international  agreement  or  by 
military  preparedness,  are  only  temporary 
contrivances,  and  it  is  our  duty  to  accept 


The  Immediate  Business  Before  Us   165 

them  not  as  solutions  to  the  problem  but 
as  temporary  bridges  which  give  us  our 
chance  to  lay  deep  foundations  for  the 
permanent  structure  that  will  follow  by 
and  by.  All  the  preparedness  measures 
which  the  human  mind  can  conceive  can- 
not convert  nations  into  true  brothers,  nor 
can  they  even  force  them  at  all  times  to 
act  like  true  brothers.  You  cannot  organ- 
ize nations  into  a  true  brotherhood:  you 
can  only  organize  them  into  an  artificial 
brotherhood,  wliich  will  go  to  pieces  at  the 
next  unusual  outbreak  of  savagery.  And 
such  outbreaks  are  liable  to  occur  just  so 
long  as  the  world  is  content  to  develop 
the  bodies  and  brains  of  men  and  leave 
their  spirits  to  shrivel  up  and  be  blown 
away.  Men  may  cross  their  hearts  and 
swear  themselves  blue,  but  all  the  solemn 
pomp  and  circumstance  of  treaty-making 
will  not  make  them  keep  a  treaty  if  their 
spiritual  vision  is  not  sufficiently  developed 
to  discern  the  difference  between  a  sacred 
promise  and  a  scrap  of  paper.  This  does 
not  mean  that  our  peace  measures  are 
valueless:  it  only  means  that,  as  I  have 
said,  the}^  are  temporary  bridges  and  we 


166  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

must   not   risk   too   much   weight    upon 
them. 

There  is  danger,  indeed,  that  some  of 
these  temporary  structures  may  fall  by 
their  own  weight.  The  moment  one's 
measures  of  protection  from  a  lawless 
neighbor  become  conspicuous  and  irritat- 
ing they  cease  to  protect  and  become  a 
peril.  The  moment  a  nation's  prepared- 
ness reaches  dimensions  that  make  it  con- 
spicuous it  is  likely  to  become  irritating, 
and  a  preparedness  that  is  irritating  may 
prove  more  perilous  than  no  preparedness 
at  all.  It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the 
custom  of  "pistol-toting"  which  was  in- 
troduced as  a  peace  measure  had  to  be 
abolished  as  a  peace  measure. 


XV 

HOW    CAN    WE    HASTEN    THE 
DAY   OF    LASTING   PEACE? 

DREAMING  of  peace  is  like 
smoking  a  pipe:  it  soothes  the 
nerves  but  it  does  not  seem 
materially  to  alter  the  situation.  We  must 
have  another  pipeful  before  dinner.  The 
world  may  smoke  its  peace  pipe  until  the 
end  of  time  and  it  will  never  be  safe  from 
war  until  something  is  done  materially  to 
alter  the  existing  situation.  And  thus  far 
only  one  plan  has  been  offered  which 
promises  to  make  the  necessary  altera- 
tions. Our  own  plans,  we  must  admit,  do 
not  go  beneath  the  surface  of  things.  The 
program  of  Jesus  alone  aims  at  the  root 
of  the  matter.  This  program  does  not 
undertake  to  heal  the  ancient  breach  be- 
tween the  lion  and  the  lamb  by  teaching 
the  lion  good  manners ;  it  goes  deeper :  it 
aims  at  changing  the  lion's  nature.  You 
can  never  be  sure  that  the  lion  will  not 

167 


168  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

eat  the  lamb  until  he  shows  a  decided 
preference  for  straw.  When  you  find  him 
as  the  prophet  saw  him,  eating  straw  like 
an  ox,  you  will  know  the  problem  is  solved. 
No  lamb  would  suffer  any  uneasiness  at 
the  close  proximity  of  a  beast  who  ate 
straw  like  an  ox. 

But  this  is  not  all.  It  is  a  plan  that 
works.  We  have  not  tried  to  work  it  very 
often  or  on  a  very  large  scale,  but  we  have 
tried  it  enough  to  know  that  it  will  work 
anywhere  and  on  any  scale.  We  have 
tried  it  in  all  sorts  of  hearts  and  homes 
and  communities  that  were  torn  with 
strife,  and  it  has  worked.  I  have  seen 
Christ  come  into  a  storm-tossed  heart  and 
work  his  miracle  of  peace  as  wonderfully 
as  he  worked  it  that  stormy  night  on  Gah- 
lee.  I  have  seen  him  work  it  on  a  storm- 
tossed  home  and  turn  a  shrieking  hell  into 
heaven.  I  have  seen  him  work  it  in  a  wild, 
strife-filled  community  and  transform  it 
almost  overnight  into  a  blissful  haven  of 
rest.  There  is  no  question  as  to  its  worka- 
bility. It  always  works.  The  only  trouble 
is,  we  so  seldom  work  it. 

That  has  been  our  trouble  in  all  ages. 


The  Day  of  Lasting  Peace        169 

The  most  humiliating  fact  in  history  is 
that  mankind  as  a  whole  has  never  shown 
any  abiding  interest  in  the  problem  of 
working  out  its  own  salvation.  It  has 
been  very  curious  to  see  how  far  it  could 
develop  the  horse,  the  cow,  the  dog,  the 
canary,  the  rose,  but  it  has  never  had  any 
great  curiosity  to  see  how  far  it  could  de- 
velop a  man.  It  has  given  much  serious 
thought  to  the  possibilities  of  sundry 
weeds  and  roots.  It  has  manifested  a  com- 
mendable interest  in  the  divine  destiny  of 
the  cabbage.  It  has  at  times  suffered  no 
little  anxiety  over  the  potato's  soul.  But 
so  far  as  history  shows  it  has  never  lost 
a  night's  sleep  over  the  future  of  the 
v/orld's  manhood.  It  has  never  been  satis- 
fied to  develop  a  horse  or  even  a  cabbage 
half  way,  but  it  has  always  been  content 
with  the  partial  development  of  men.  If 
a  potato  had  an  intellect  and  a  spirit  as 
well  as  a  body,  mankind  would  never  rest 
until  it  had  developed  its  intellect  and  its 
spirit  as  far  as  it  had  developed  its  body; 
but  in  the  case  of  a  man  it  is  usually  con- 
tent if  his  body  is  developed  to  full  size 
and  his  intellect  to  half  size.     The  spirit 


170  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

may  go.  There  has  never  been  a  time 
when  the  race  as  a  whole  has  been  inter- 
ested in  the  problem  of  bringing  men  to 
complete  manhood — to  the  point  where  a 
man  is  a  full  grown  man  intellectually  and 
spiritually  as  well  as  physically. 

I  have  called  this  the  most  humiliating 
fact  in  history.  Hardly  less  humiliating 
to  a  Christian,  however,  is  the  fact  that 
although  the  followers  of  Christ  have  been 
in  possession  of  his  plan  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  manhood  of  the  race  for 
nearly  two  thousand  years,  there  is  not  a 
country  on  earth  today  in  which  there  are 
enough  men  of  high  moral  power  to  pre- 
serve peace  in  great  crises  even  within  its 
own  borders. 

It  is  high  time  we  were  taking  our  re- 
ligion seriously.  If  Christ  has  placed 
upon  us  the  task  of  cooperating  with  him 
in  the  business  of  making  men  for  his 
kingdom  it  is  time  we  were  settling  down 
to  our  task.  Our  slowly  awakening  con- 
sciousness of  national  peril  has  trans- 
formed hundreds  of  American  plants  into 
plants  for  the  making  of  munitions.  What 
we  are  now  needing  is  a  rapidly  awakening 


The  Day  of  Lasting  Peace        171 

consciousness  of  Christian  responsibility 
that  will  transform  every  home,  every 
church  and  every  school  in  the  land  into 
a  plant  for  the  making  of  men. 

There  was  a  time  when  vv^e  loved  to 
boast  that  every  American  home  was  a 
cradle  of  liberty  and  manhood.  I  am  not 
sure  that  I  know  just  what  the  average 
American  home  is  today,  but  I  find  it 
difficult  to  think  of  it  as  a  home  at  all.  One 
has  a  lurking  suspicion  that  it  is  a  board- 
ing house.  And  boarding  houses,  we 
know,  are  not  cradles  of  liberty  and  man- 
hood. As  for  our  churches,  one  can  hardly 
speak  of  them  as  a  whole.  Undoubtedly 
most  of  them  were  built  as  plants  for  the 
making  of  men,  and  undoubtedly  many  of 
them  are  still  working  at  their  original 
job;  but  one  does  not  need  to  go  to  the 
statistics  to  discover  that  in  recent  years 
many  more  have  been  overhauled  and 
equipped  for  other  jobs.  And  as  for  our 
schools 

But  one  has  no  heart  to  talk  about  our 
schools.  The  greatest  educational  ideal 
the  world  ever  knew  was  the  American 
ideal,  and  until  the  Great  Invasion  our 


172  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  iVbout  War? 

universities  and  colleges  were  undoubtedly 
turning  out  more  complete  men — men 
who  were  developed  spiritually  as  well  as 
physically  and  intellectually^ — than  all  the 
universities  and  colleges  of  Europe  com- 
bined. No  nation  ever  had  as  many  men 
of  great  moral  power  as  America  had  in 
the  last  century.  But  the  Great  Invasion, 
in  which  Germany  took  possession  of 
nearly  all  our  great  educational  strong- 
holds in  a  single  night,  and  did  it  so 
quietly  that  most  people  never  knew  what 
happened — the  Great  Invasion  changed 
all  that.  It  is  true  there  are  many  little 
colleges  and  a  few  big  ones  which  are  still 
magnifying  the  ancient  ideal  with  all  their 
ancient  zeal  and  devoting  their  entire 
equipment  to  the  business  of  making  men 
by  education — not  mere  instruction,  which 
only  reaches  the  intellect,  but  education, 
which  develops  the  whole  man ; — but  most 
of  the  captured  institutions  no  longer 
show  any  great  enthusiasm  for  either  edu- 
cation or  men.  They  are  no  longer  con- 
tent to  put  a  boy  on  one  end  of  a  log  and 
a  Mark  Hopkins  on  the  other.  One  may 
saj'  that  it  is  because  there  are  no  longer 


The  Day  of  Lasting  Peace        173 

enough  Mark  Hopkinses  to  go  round, 
which  is  true :  but  it  is  also  true  that  they 
are  no  longer  interested  in  the  problem 
of  making  enough  Mark  Hopkinses  to 
go  round.  They  are  no  longer  trjang  to 
develop  men  to  the  highest  power  accord- 
ing to  the  ancient  American  plan;  they 
are  trying  to  make  machine  men  according 
to  the  German  plan — tremendous  machine 
men  after  the  German  ideal  who  can  run 
tremendous  machines  after  the  German 
pattern.  And  they  are  making  them — 
not  men  but  machine  men,  built  from  the 
ground  up  for  a  single  purpose  and  so 
completely  specialized  that  only  the  par- 
ticular faculty  developed  is  recognized  as 
the  man,  while  all  the  rest  is  merely  a 
hanger-on  like  a  vermiform  appendix. 

We  have  put  down  the  sacrifice  of  Bel- 
gium as  the  most  horrible  crime  in  modern 
history.  It  may  be  the  most  horrible,  but 
it  is  not  the  most  unnatural.  The  most 
unnatural  crime  in  modern  history  is  the 
sacrifice  of  German  manhood  to  the  un- 
bridled ambition  of  the  German  autocracy. 
Led  on  by  its  inordinate  tliirst  for  world- 
power  the  German  government  deliber- 


174  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

ately  turned  its  people  from  the  task  of 
developing  their  spiritual  manliood — 
something  which  could  only  hinder  its 
program  instead  of  helping  it — and  un- 
dertook to  convert  them  into  machines 
such  as  it  could  use  to  the  best  advantage 
in  the  achievement  of  its  ambition.  For 
generations  the  German  universities  in 
their  efforts  to  make  out  of  their  students 
bigger  and  better  machines  to  meet  the 
government's  demands,  systematically 
sacrificed  the  spiritual  to  the  material  as 
one  would  prune  a  tomato  vine  down  to 
within  an  inch  of  its  life  to  produce  an 
enormous  tomato.  We  used  to  wonder  at 
Germany's  extraordinary  intellectual  vi- 
sion. Since  the  Great  War  began  we  have 
been  wondering  at  her  equally  extraordi- 
nary spiritual  blindness.  But  there  is 
nothing  amazing  in  either:  you  cannot 
gain  the  whole  world,  or  the  kind  of  vision 
that  is  necessary  to  gain  it,  without  losing 
your  own  soul.  It  was  as  natural  that 
Germany  should  gain  its  marvelous  intel- 
lectual vision  at  the  expense  of  its  spiritual 
vision  as  it  is  for  one  end  of  a  seesaw 
to  go  up  while  the  other  comes  down. 


The  Day  of  Lasting  Peace        175 

Heaven  forbid  that  we  should  gloat 
over  this  horror  of  a  great  darkness  wliich 
has  fallen  upon  those  who  hate  us ;  but  may 
Heaven  forbid  that  we  should  continue 
to  follow  in  their  steps  and  thus  invite 
upon  ourselves  the  same  terrible  fate. 

I  have  recently  read  somewhere  that  a 
college  professor,  who  modestly  leaves 
you  to  infer  that  he  is  not  a  religious  man, 
has  written  a  book  to  show  that  nearly  all 
the  best  equipped  professors  in  our  larger 
colleges  are  agnostics.  I  am  not  disposed 
to  believe  that  he  has  proved  his  point  or 
can  prove  it,  but  it  is  somewhat  discon- 
certing to  reflect  that  we  have  professors 
in  American  colleges  who  can  persuade 
themselves  that  the  prevalence  of  agnosti- 
cism in  their  profession  is  a  matter  of  such 
pride  as  to  warrant  its  publication  in  book 
form.  Agnosticism  may  be  only  an  intel- 
lectual attitude,  but  everybody  except  the 
agnostic  knows  that  it  is  not  a  sign  of 
moral  power.  No  man  begins  to  make 
any  progress  toward  spiritual  manliood 
until  he  can  stiffen  his  knees  and  hold  up 
his  head  and  affirm  something.  He  need 
not  say  the  whole  creed,  but  he  must  be- 


176  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

heve  in  something.     He  must  believe  in 
something  other  than  himself.     .     .    . 

After  all  is  said  and  done  the  fact  re- 
mains that  the  only  hope  of  lasting  peace 
among  nations  is  a  lasting  peace  among 
individuals,  and  experience  has  taught  us 
that  the  only  hope  of  a  lasting  peace 
among  individuals  is  the  peace  which  re- 
sults from  harmony  with  God.  If  this  is 
true  our  path  of  duty  is  plain.  We  must 
stop  dreaming  over  our  peace-pipes  and 
get  up  and  go  to  work  to  bring  men  into 
harmony  with  God.  And  we  must  do  our 
work  according  to  Christ's  own  plan.  We 
must  cooperate  with  him  in  his  great  pro- 
gram for  rescuing  human  beings  from  the 
bondage  of  animalism  and  lifting  them  up 
to  the  heights  of  spiritual  manhood  where 
(their  spiritual  eyes  being  opened)  they 
will  recognize  their  true  place  and  des- 
tiny and  will  fall  in  step  with  God  as 
their  Father  and  with  one  another  as 
brothers. 

This  and  this  alone  is  the  solution  to 
our  problem. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  present 


The  Day  of  Lasting  Peace        177 

war  is  not  important.  It  is  tremendously 
important.  But  we  might  as  well  face  the 
truth:  its  value  is  going  to  depend  upon 
the  use  we  make  of  it.  Twenty  years 
from  today  we  may  be  able  to  say  that  it 
was  worth  a  hundred  times  more  than  it 
cost;  but  we  may  have  to  say  that  it  was 
worth  a  hundred  times  less.  War  is  too 
big  a  price  to  pay  for  a  draw  game  that 
will  leave  the  world  where  it  was  before. 
It  would  be  better — far  better — to  burn 
up  all  the  money  and  flesh  and  blood  we 
are  going  to  spend  on  it  at  once  and  be 
done  with  it  than  go  on  with  the  present 
horror  if  we  are  not  going  to  get  any- 
thing more  out  of  it  than  a  mere  artificial 
peace  that  will  affect  only  our  material 
interests.  We  cannot  afford  such  a  hor- 
ror for  mere  material  advantage  of  any 
sort.  The  game  is  not  worth  the  candle. 
And  certainly  we  cannot  afford  to  tramp 
up  and  down  the  world  hunting  savagery 
and  tyranny  until  we  have  soaked  the 
earth  with  our  blood  if  the  hunt  is  going 
to  end  while  these  beasts  are  still  roaming 
the  forests.  War  is  no  longer  a  sport.  It 
is  the  biggest  sacrifice  we  can  make  of 


178  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

anything  ^ye  have  a  right  to  part  with,  and 
Heaven  knows  we  cannot  afford  to  pay 
such  a  price  for  anything  that  is  super- 
ficial or  temporary  or  only  of  material 
benefit.  We  must  demand  something  last- 
ing, and  that  means  we  must  demand 
something  spiritual.  The  only  way  we  can 
get  out  of  this  war  what  we  are  putting 
into  it  is  to  use  it  as  an  opportunity  for 
spiritual  enrichment.  We  must  make  it  a 
part  of  Christ's  great  plan  for  eternal 
peace.  W^e  must  turn  with  scorn  from 
every  selfish  impulse  and  cast  ourselves 
into  the  breach  for  God  and  humanity,  re- 
solved that  every  law  of  God  ^vliich  ty- 
rants are  trampling  under  their  feet  shall 
be  rescued  and  exalted  in  the  earth,  and 
that  every  oppressed  human  being  witliin 
our  reach  shall  be  set  free  and  lifted  up 
and  given  a  chance  to  achieve  the  highest 
end  of  his  being. 

And  this  means  that  we  must  go  back 
not  only  to  the  program  of  Christ  but  to 
Christ.  Xot  to  the  Christ  of  our  selfish 
dreams;  not  to  the  Christ  of  our  senti- 
mental fancies;    not  to  the  Christ  of  our 


The  Day  of  Lasting  Peace        179 

literal  interpretations,  but  to  the  Christ — 
the  Christ  of  the  Cross. 

It  is  only  in  the  light  of  the  face  of 
Christ — Christ,  the  hero;  Christ,  the 
champion  of  the  oppressed;  Christ,  the 
ideal  and  hope  and  inspiration  of  our  man- 
hood ;  Christ  the  f ountainhead  of  our  com- 
passion; Christ  the  lover  of  men  and  the 
hater  of  hate  and  greed  and  selfishness 
and  tyranny  and  all  the  chains  that  de- 
prive men  of  the  chance  of  manhood — it 
is  only  in  this  light  that  we  can  hope  to 
find  our  divinely  appointed  path  through 
this  horror  of  a  great  darkness. 

Let  us  go  back  to  Ch/ist.  It  may  be 
that  in  the  light  of  his  face  we  shall  see 
how  far  we  have  missed  his  spirit  and  how 
little  sincerity  and  how  much  of  selfish- 
ness there  has  been  in  our  prayers  for 
peace.  It  may  be  that  he  will  fill  our 
hearts  with  his  own  compassion  for  the 
oppressed  and  his  own  indignation  against 
the  oppressor  that  w^ll  never  let  us  rest 
with  the  cry  of  bound  aiid  bleeding  hu- 
manity in  our  ears.  It  may  be  that  in  his 
presence  we  shall  learn  to  hate  the  smell 
of  warm  blood  upon  the  sword  of  the  ty- 


180  What  Did  Jesus  Teach  About  War? 

rant  at  least  as  much  as  we  have  been 
hating  to  hear  about  blood  in  this  terri- 
ble war  against  tyranny.  It  may  be  that 
he  will  put  into  our  hearts  his  own  love 
for  humanit)^ — a  love  so  broad  and  deep 
that  we  can  love  our  enemies  with  humil- 
ity and  not  irritate  them  to  vengeance  by 
thanking  God  that  we  are  not  as  they  are. 
It  may  be  that  he  will  open  our  eyes  to  a 
vision  that  will  keep  us  from  consuming 
our  lives  in  the  making  of  baubles  and 
turn  us  back  with  an  unquenchable  en- 
thusiasm to  our  divinely  appointed  task. 


Printed  in  the  Vnited  States  of  America 


SERMONS  AND  ADDRESSES 

jMnmnrFrrrrm mn  ..i...  i  ...         i       I'lur^w 

J.    H.    JOfVETT     D-D.  Fifth  Avtnut  Prtsbyurian  Church 

^  Kttu   York 

The  Whole  Armour  of  God 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.35. 

"This  popular  preacher  is,  not  only  by  his  own  people,  'out 
also  by  large  numbers  of  others,  considered  the  very  greatest 
preacher.  He  is  possessed  of  a  rare  and  perhaps  unequalled 
combination  of  the  very  Qualities  which  captivate.  His 
thoughts  are  always  expressed  in  the  simplest  possible  diction, 
10  that  their  crystalline  clearness  makes  them  at  once  appre- 
hended."— Christian  Evangelist. 

EDGAR    DE  fflTT  JONES  Author  ,/  "Th.  lnn.r  CircU" 

The  Wisdom  of  God's  Fools 

And  Other  Sermons.    i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.15. 

A  volume  of  discourses,  displaying  the  same  facility  for  the 
right  word  and  fitting  phrase  which  marked  the  author's  pre- 
vious work.  Mr.  Jones  preaches  sermons  that  read  well — a 
not  at  all  common  quality.  He  is  a  thinker  too;  and  brings 
to  his  thinking  a  lucidity  and  attractiveness  which  make  his 
presentation  of  great  truths  an  artistic,  as  well  as  an  inspiring 
achievement.  A  note  of  deep  spirituality  is  everywhere  mani- 
fest. 

FREDERICK  F.    SHANNON       Pa,ur  of  th.  Reformed. Church-,n. 
— — — ^-^^^— -— ^— ^^  ihi-Beishts,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y- 

The  Enchanted  Universe 

And  Other  Sermons.    i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

Mr.  Shannon's  reputation  as  an  eloquent  and  forceful 
preacher  is  still  further  enhanced  by  his  new  volume  of  ser- 
mons. The  fervid,  glowing  character  of  the  popular  Brooklyn 
pastor's  appeals,  make  the  reading  of  his  latest  book,  not  only 
an  inspiring,  but  a  fascinating  exercise. 

GEORGE  W.   TRUETT,  D.D.  >P«J^<»:  ^'«' ^«>'"' 

»■  —   ' '  ■  Church,  Dallas,  Tex. 

We  Would  See  Jesus  and  Other  Sermons 
Compiled  and  edited  by  J.  B.  Cranfill.    Net  $1.15. 

"One  of  the  greatest — many  would  say  the  greatest — of  all 
the  world's  preachers  to-day.  It  ranks  high  among  the  ex- 
tant books  of  sermons,  past  and  present  and  des«rves  a  pla«« 
in  millions  of  homes." — Biblical  Recorder. 

BISHOP  CHARLES  EDJVARD  CHENEY 

A  Neglected  Power 

And  Other  Sermons.    i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

•'Thoroughly  evangelical  in  spirit,  refreshing  in  Biblical 
truth  and  abounding  in  helpful  ministrations  for  every  day 
Hfe." — B-eangelical  Messenger. 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  FAITH 


JAMES  H.  SNOWDEN,  P.P. 

The  Psychology  of  Religion 

8vo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

Psychology  is  one  of  the  most  rapidly  advancing  of  modera 
sciences,  and  Dr.  Snowden's  book  will  find  a  ready  welcome. 
While  especially  adapted  for  the  use  of  ministers  and  teach- 
ers, it  is  not  in  any  sense  an  ultra-academic  work.  This  it 
evidenced  by  the  fact  that  the  material  forming  it  has  been 
delivered  not  only  as  a  successful  Summer  School  course,  but 
in  the  form  of  popular  lectures,  open  to  the  general  public. 

WILLIAM  HALLOCK  JOHNSON,  Ph. P.,  P.P. 

ProftssT  0/  Grtek  and  New  Testament  Literature  in  Lincoln  University,  f  A 

The  Christian  Faith  under  Modem 
Searchlight 

The  L.  P.  Stone  lyectures,  Princeton.  Intro- 
duction by  Francis  L.  Patton,  D.D.    Cloth,  net  $1.25. 

The  faith  which  is  to  survive  must  not  only  be  a  traditional 
but  an  intelligent  faith  which  has  its  roots  in  reason  and  ex- 
perience and  its  blossom  and  fruit  in  character  and  good 
works.  To  this  end,  the  author  examines  the  fundamentals 
of  the  Christian  belief  in  the  light  of  to-day  and  reaches  the 
conclusion  that  every  advance  in  knowledge  establishes  its 
sovereign  claim  to  be  from  heaven  and  not  from  men. 

ANPREW  fr.  ARCHIBALP,   P.P. 

Author  tj"  The  Bible  Verified,"  "The  Trend  of  the  Centuries,"  eU. 

The  Modern  Man  Facing  the  Old 
Problems 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

A  thoughtful,  ably-conducted  study  in  which  those  prob- 
lems of  human  life,  experience  and  destiny,  which,  in  one 
form  or  another,  seem  recurrent  in  every  age,  are  examined 
from  what  may  be  called  a  Biblical  viewpoint.  That  is  to  sajr, 
the  author  by  its  .lluminating  rays,  endeavors  to  find  eluci- 
dation and  solution  for  the  difficulties,  which  in  more  or  left 
degree,   perplex  believer  and  unbeliever   alike.  ' 

NOLAN    RICE    BEST  Editor  0/  "  The  Cntinmi" 

Applied  Religion  for  Everyman      | 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

Nolan  Rice  Best  has  earned  a  well-deserved  reputation  ifi 
the  religious  press  of  America,  as  a  writer  of  virile,  trench- 
antly-phrased editorials.  The  selection  here  brought  together 
represent  his  best  efforts,  and  contains  an  experienced  edi- 
tor's suggestions  for  the  ever-recurrent  problems  confronting 
Church  members  as  a  body,  and  as  individual  Christians.  Mr. 
Best  wields  a  facile  pen,  and  a.  sudden  gleam  of  beauty,  m 
difficult  thought  set  in  a  perfect  phrase,  ar  an  eld  idea  i»- 
Tested  with  new  meaninj;  and  grace,  ia««to  vnc  at  tvcfy  tara 
•f  tk«  page."— r^  ReMrd  Htrmid. 


INSPIRATION  FOR  MEN 


ROBERT  fF.  BOLIFELL 

After  College— What? 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  75c. 

A  protest,  in  the  form  of  autobiographical  chapters,  against 
dawdling  through  college.  The  author  is  sprightly  and  read- 
able,— anything  but  preachy — but  does  put  some  very  whole- 
some ancl  helpful  facts  in  such  form  as  to  grip  the  readei. 

HALFORD  E.  LUCCOCK 

Five-Minute  Shop-Talks 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  ^i.oo. 

One  of  the  best  things  of  its  kind  yet  issued.  In  each 
of  these  thirty  or  more  brief  addresses,  Mr.  I,uccock  em- 
ploys terse,  epigrammatic  language  and  contrives  to  compress 
into  a  five-nunute  talk  the  wisdom  and  counsel  of  a  fifty- 
minute  sermon.  Every  word  is  made  to  tell— te  tell  some- 
thing worth   hearing  and  heeding. 

CHARLES  CARROLL  ALBERTSON 

Chapel  Talks 

A  Collection  of  Sermons  to  College  Students. 
i2nio,  cloth,  net  $i.oo. 

Practical  discourses  on  essential  subjects  delivered  in  vart- 
ous  colleges  and  universities,  including  Columbia,  Cornell, 
Dartmouth,  Princeton,  Yale,  and  Virginia.  No  one  of  these 
sermons  required  more  than  twenty-five  minutes  to  deliver. 
They  are  characterized  by  earnest  argument,  familiar  illus- 
trations and   forceful  appeal. 

CORTLANDT    MYERS,     D.D.  Auth.r,f^R,alPrayir." 

'  ^ThtRtal  Hdlj  StMt,"  ttt. 

The  Man  Inside 

A  Study  of  One's  Self.  By  Minister  at  Tremont 
Temple,  Boston.    i2mo,  cloth,  net  50c. 

A  four-fold  study  of  the  inner  life  of  a  man,  in  which  the 
popular  pastor  of  Tremont  Temple,  discusses  the  forces  that 
make  him,  lift  him,  save  him,  and  move  him.  The  book  is 
prepared  m  bright,  interesting  fashion,  and  abundantly  fur- 
nished with  suitable  and  forceful  illustration. 

JOHN  T.  FARIS  PePular-Price  Editions 

The  "Success  Books" 

Three  Vols,  each,  formerly  $1.25  net.    Now  each 
60c  net  (postage  extra). 
Seeking  Success 
Men  Who  Made  Good 
Making  Good 

Dr.  J.  R.  Miller  says:  "Bright  and  short  and  full  of  illus- 
trations from  actual  life,  they  are  just  the  sort  that  will  help 
young  men  in  the  home  in  school  among  associates  and  in 
business." 


PROBLEMS  OF  WAR  AND  PEACE 


EDffARD  A.  STEINER 

Nationalizing  America 

121110,  doth,  net  $1.15. 

How  to  set  in  order  our  national  house,  so  as  best  to  face 
the  international  crisis  at  the  close  of  the  Great  War,  bow 
to  secure  better  unity,  solidarity  and  genuine  nationalization, 
are  some  of  the  problems  to  which  Professor  Steiner  ad- 
dresses himself.  It  is  a  book  of  rare  quality  written  by  a 
man  who  thinks  and  feels  deeply  and  who  has  a  fiery  patriot- 
ism for  the  land  of  bis  adoption. 

The  Confession  of  a  Hyphenated 
American         i2ino,  net  soc. 

"There  is  a  wholesome  ring  to  the  book,  containing^  many 
wholesome  suggestions  for  those  who  are  coming  to  this  land 
to  make  it  their  future  home." — Herald  and  Presbyter. 

"A  small  book,  but  it  is  full  of  meat.  It  ought  to  exert  a 
powerful  influence  among  naturalized  Americans,  but  there 
are  also  manjr  things  in  it  which  native  Americans  would  d« 
well  to  read  and  ponder." — Albany  Argus. 


PrtftiiiT  •/  Biiltry  Mnd  InurntUtnal 
Rtlatitni  in  Sxuarthmm  Ctlltf 

Preparedness  ;   The  American  versus  Mili- 
tary Programme       i2mo.  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

Dr.  Chas.  E.  Jefferson  says:  "Prof.  Hull  has  done  a  di»- 
tinct  service  by  presenting  the  case  against  enlarged  militarr 
preparedness  at  the  present  time.  I  wish  that  his  words 
might  be  read  by  millions  of  our  people." 

Hamilton  Holt,  Editor  of  The  Independent  says:  "A 
veritable  arsenal  of  facts  and  arguments  for  all  those  who 
know  this  side  of  the  greatest  issue  now  before  the  Amer- 
ican people." 

CHAMJ.es  E.  JEFFERSON,  D.D.       Br.adwa,  TMi,msci. 

==^ ' Nsw  Y»ri 

What  the  War  Is  Teaching 

Merrick  Lectures  for  1916  Ohio  Wesleyan  Uni- 
versity.   i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

In  five  brilliant  discourses,  Dr.  Jefferson  gathers  up  some 
of  the  lessons  of  the  European  struggle.  Until  war  is  bitterly 
hated,  W  can  never  be  abolished.  Europe  has  never  really 
hated  war.  Dr.  Jefferson  contends;  that  is  why  she  is  in  the 
trenches  to-day.  What  she  needs — what  the  whole  world  needs 
— is  to  be  made  literally  sick  by  its  horrifying  spectacle. 
This,  among  other  things  the  Great  War  is  surely  doing. 
Titles  of  lectures  are  as  follows:  I.  What  War  Is.  II.  What 
Is  In  Man.  IH.  The  Inexorableness  of  Law.  IV.  What 
Armed  Peace  Leads  to.    V.  The  Indispensableness  of  RcligioB. 


PRACTICAL  RELIGION-CHURCH  HISTORY 

»■■     ■  '  —  =■ 

tJ4^0LD   BEGBIE  Author  of  "TwieeBom  Men'* 

The  Proof  of  God 

A  Dialogue  With  Two  Letters.    lamo,  cloth,  net  75c. 

Tke  author  of  "Twice-Born  Men"  here  enters  a  new  fiel4 
Bf  thought.  It  i»  a  most  effective  book — one  that  will  be 
read  ana  passed  on  to  others.  His  method  of  meeting  the 
agnostic  and  the  skeptic  is  admirable.  Here  is  philosophy 
presented  in  conversational  form,  pointed  and  convincing. 

WILLIAM  J.  LHAMON,  D.D,  DeanofBibU  School.  Drurv 
'  Collegt,  Springfield,  M», 

The  Character  Christ— Fact  or  Fiction? 

i2nio,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

A  study  of  the  Christian  Gospels,  prepared  and  presented 
with  a  view  to  enforcing  the  slaims  of  tke  historical  Christ. 
Attention  is  directed  to  the  literary  presentation  of  the  cbar« 
acter  Christ. 

C.   L.   DRAWBRIDGE 

Common  Objections  to  Christianity 

Library  of  Historic  Theology.  8vo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 
An  ahly  compiled  volum«  deafing  with  almost  every  cur- 
rent objection  to  Christianity.  The  author  write*  with  a 
pretty  full  knowledge  of  these  objections,  having,  as  Secre- 
tary ©f  the  Christian  Evidence  Society,  lectured  in  the  Lon- 
don Parks  and  held  his  own  against  all  sorts  of  questioners. 

CHARLES  J.  SHEB BEARS         Rtctor  of  S-wirford, 

—————'———————  Oxon,  England 

Religion  in  an  Age  of  Doubt 

Library  of  Historic  Theology.    8vo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

To  this  great  problem  Mr.  Shebbeare  addresses  himself, 
claiming  that  with  the  old  faith  and  the  added  insight  of  a 
new  teaching,  believers  may  lay  the  foundations  of  a  devo- 
tional system,  which  furnishes  a  rational  ground  for  a  robust 
faith. 

W.  J.  SPARROW  SIMPSON,  D.D. 

The  Catholic  Conception  of  the  Church 

Library  of  Historic  Theology.     8vo,  cloth,  net  5^1.50. 

Pr.  Simpson's  book  supplies  the  information  and  assists  in 
t9naku[  a  right  judgment:  What  Christ  taught  and  did; 
wiwt  St.  Paul  and  tne  Early  Fathers  conceived  to  be  the 
functions  of  the  Church;  the  idea  of  the  Church  in  the  Coutr 
cil   of   Trent,    are    among   the    matters    ably    discussed. 

JOHN  B.  RUST,  D.D. 

Modernism  and  the  Reformation 

larao,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

Ihe  aim  of  this  able  treatise  is  to  defend  the  Protestant 
Reformed  faith,  as  against  the  liberalizing  movement  withii'i 
the  Romsn  Church  known  as  Modernism.  The  essential 
principles  »f  Protestaniam  are  set  forth  in  detail  with  an 
•xhaustive  review  of  the  trend  and  methods  of  Modernism. 


JAPAN— MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS 

KIYOSHI  K.  KAWAKAMI  Author  of  "AmeHcmn 

■  Japanese  Relations 

Asia  at  the  Door 

A  Study  of  the  Japanese  Question  in  Continental 
United  States,  Hawaii,  and  Canada.    Cloth,  net  $1.50. 

"The  most  intelligent  and  trustworthy  estimate  of  Japanese 
influence  and  achievement  in  America  that  has  yet  been  put 
into  print.  It  clears  the  international  atmosphere  of  many 
clouds,  subterfuges,  and  delusiens." — North  American. 

MATTHIAS  KLEIN  Missionary  of 

'  Free  Methodist  Church 

By  Nippon's  Lotus  Ponds 

Pen  Pictures  of  Real  Japan.   Illustrated.   Net  $i.OO. 

"The  author  has  spent  many  years  in  the  land  ef  cherry 
blossoms,  so  that  he  has  had  ample  opportunity  to  revise  his 
first  impressions.  He  describes  in  graphic  style,  weddings, 
New  Year's  ceremonies,  funeral  pageants,  pilsriraages  to 
temples  and  tombs  and  many  other  curious  features  of  Jap- 
anese life." — San  Francisco  Chronicle, 

MARGARET  E.  BURTON  Author  of " Notablt  Women 

^^^^——^—^——^-^—^  of  Modern  China 

The  Education  of  Women  in  Japan 

Illustrated,  i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

"Miss  Burton,  who  in  her  former  books  has  written  in- 
terestingly concerning  the  women  of  China,  now  turns  her  at- 
tention to  Japan,  and  presents  a  thorough  treatment  ef  the 
question  of  the  education  of  women  in  the  Island  Empire. 
Particularly  does  she  tell  the  story  of  the  large  contribution 
which  missionary  enterprise  has  made  to  education." — Spirit 
of  Missions. 

FRED.   EUGENE  HAGIN  Missionary  of  the  Disciples 
^^———  Church,  Tokio,  Japan 

The  Cross  in  Japan 

A  Study  in  Achievement  and  Opportunity.  Illus- 
trated, 8vo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

"Every  one  interested  in  this  wonderful  little  country  of  the 
Orient  should  read  this  book.  Mr.  Hagin  has  not  simply 
been  a  casual  observer,  but  a  close,  discriminating  student  of 
Japanese  life.  The  whole  book  is  saturated,  filled  with  the  at- 
mosphere of  service  and  Christian  altruism.  One  axceptianal 
authority  pronounces  it  the  best  book  an  Japan  «v«r  pub- 
lished."— Missionary    Tidings. 

JOHN  HYDE  DE  FOREST 

The  Evolution  of  a  Missionary 

A  Biography  of  John  Hyde  De  Forest,  for  thirty- 
seven  years  Missionary  of  the  American  Board,  in 
Japan,  by  Charlotte  B.  De  Forest.  Illustrated,  net 
$1.50. 

"Even  the  most  csnservatiye  critic  will  bless  God  f»r  s* 
Christlike  a  life  and  so  devoted  a  ministry.  CandidatM  «t»i 
young  missionaries  will  find  in  these  pages  a  norm  for  thetr 
own  imitation  in  those  methods  and  actiTitioc  whioh  are 
fundamental  ia  miisioas  "— P*-"*    f*"rlan  P.  Btath. 


EARLIER  WORKS  IN  DEMAND 


CHARLES  G.   TRUMBULL 

Anthony  Gomstock,  Fighter 

Illustrated,  iimo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

"Probably  there  is  «o  man  on  this  continent  to-day  wfc» 
has  doae  more  to  clean  things  up  than  Mr.  C«mst«olc  haa, 
or  shown  more  splendid  courage  and  endurance  in  the  4o(MS 
of  it.  It  is  a  splendid  story,  that  will  not  only  inspire  its 
''eaders,  but  will  send  many  a  ma»  out  himself  for  the  pood 
cause  of  cleanness  and  righteousness  in  the  land." — Chris- 
tian  Guardian. 

FRANK  J.  CANNON— DR.  GEORGE  L.  KNAPP 

Brigham  Young  and  His  Mormon  Empire 

Illustrated,  8vo,  cloth,  net  $1.50, 

"Senator  Cannon  was  born  a  Mormon,  but  has  since  seen 
light.  Nevertheless,  his  story  of  Brigham  Young's  life  is  not 
a  polemic.  Born  in  a  Puritan  home,  endowed  with  a  for««- 
ftil  personality  and  a  gift  for  administration.  Brigham 
Young  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque  characters  in  our 
Anerican  life,  and  his  biography  reads  like  a  chapter  in  the 
life  of  an  ancient  patriarch,  a  modern  politician  and  a  busi- 
ness  promoter    all    rolled   together." — Congregationalist. 

CLARA  E.  LAUGHLIN         ._       Autktr  ,f 

'  Everybody  s  Lontsome. 

The  Work-A-Day  Girl 

A  Study  of  Present  Day  Conditions.  Illustrated, 
i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

"Sociologically  considered,  this  is  a  most  important  work, 
written  by  a  woman  who  has  personally  investigated  the  com- 
ditions  she  recites.  Her  knowledge,  bought  by  years  of  serv- 
ioe,  proves  that  environment  alone  is  not  responsible  for  the 
perils  of  unguarded  girlhood.  For  that  reasen  the  book  ap- 
p«al6  individually  to  all  who  come  in  touch  with  the  worka- 
<i«y  girl,  and  teaches  that  whether  or  not  we  be  our  broth- 
er's keeper,  there  is  no  doubt  as  to  our  responsibility  toward 
•ur  little  sister  of  toil." — Washington  Evening  Star. 

FREDERIC  J.  HASKIN     ..^  Author  or 

^^——^^——^•^^———      '  J'/ie  American  Gfverntneni" 

The  Immigrant :  An  Asset  and  a  Liability 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.35. 

"Persons  are  asking  how  they  may  best  do  their  duty  and 
tlieir  whole  duty  to  those  coming  to  our  shores.  This  book 
M  a  valuable  light  on  the  subject.  It  is  full  of  facts  and  it 
i*  a  cabbie  and  conscientious  study  as  to  the  meaning  of  the 
iaate.  Any  thoughtful  person  will  find  here  amch  valu- 
able material  for  study  and  the  boek  is  calculated  to  do  much 
'." — Htrali  and  rrtsbytir. 


ESSAYS.  SlUDIES,  ADDRESSES 

FROr.  HUGH  BUCK 

The  New  World 

i6mo,  cloth,  net  $1.15. 

"The  old  order  changeth,  bringing  in  the  new,"  T«  m  ft- 
▼iew  of  our  changing  world — religious,  scientific,  social — Hugli 
Black  brings  that  interpretative  skill  and  keen  insight  which 
distinguishes  all  his  writings  and  thinking.  Especially  does  he 
face  the  problem  of  the  present-day  unsettlement  and  unrest 
in  religious  beliefs  with  sanity  and  courage,  furnishing  in  thi», 
u  in  other  aspects  of  his  enquiry,  a  new  viewpoint  and  clari* 
ficd  outlook. 

S.  D.  GORDON' 

Quiet  Talks  on  John*s  Gospel 

As  Presented  in  the  Gospel  of  John.  Cloth,  net  85c. 

Mr.  Gordon  halts  his  reader  here  and  there,  at  some  pre- 
ieious  text,  some  outstanding  instance  of  God's  tenderness, 
much  as  a  traveller  lingers  for  refreshment  at  a  wayside 
spring,  and  bids  us  hearken  as  God's  wooing  note  is  heard 
pleading  for  consecrated  service.  An  enheartening  book,  and 
a.  restful.  A  book  of  the  winning  Voice,  of  outstretched 
Hands. 

ROBERT  F.   HORTON,  P.P. 

The  Springs  of  Joy  and  Other  Addresses 
lamo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

"Scholarly,  reverent,  penetrating,  human.  The  product  of 
ft  nature  mm&  and  of  a  genuine  and  sustained  religious  ex- 
perience. The  message  of  a  thinker  and  a  saint,  which  will 
be  found  to  be  very  helpful." — Christian  Intelligencer. 

BISHOP  fTALTER  R.   LAMBUTH 

Winning  the  World  for  Chri^ 

A  Study  of  Dynamics.  Cole  Lectures  for  1915, 
i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

Ttis  l>cture-Course  is  a  spirited  contribution  to  the  dy- 
namics of  Missions.  It  presents  a  study  of  the  sources  of  in- 
•piration  and  power  in  the  lives  of  missionaries,  native  and 
foreign,  who  with  supreme  abandon  gave  themselves  utterly 
to  the  work  to  which  they  were  called. 

FREPERICK  F.  SHANNON,  P.P. 

The  New  Personality  and  Other  Sermons 
lamo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

Mr.  Shannon,  pastor  of  the  Reformed  Church  on  tb* 
lleifhts,  Brooklyn,  is  possessed  of  lofty  ideals,  is  purpose- 
ful, more  than  ordinarily  eloquent  and  has  the  undoubted 
(tfts  of  felicitous  and  epigrammatic  expression.  This  new  vol- 
nnie  by  the  popular  preacher  is  a  contribution  sf  distinct  TlUtM 
to  current  termonic  literature. 


Date  Due 

ft    '^rt    K 

Ml- 

9   Jcv 

*f 

o:  22  ' 

iO 

• 

f) 

.♦•    >•*. 


